We proposed over Marcel’s
Peppered Steak.
Me first, you first, one or the other.
From the Dixon
Street
the lights of Wellington
at half-mast for the imminent death
of my current relationship;
the one you invaded,
the one I was ready to betray.
A room that should be storing bric-à-brac;
instead a single bed with evidence
the sheets have never been washed.
A succession of overnight guests.
Crestfallen curtains failing to meet;
a communal duvet past its use-by date
hovers over us long enough to disguise
reunion timidity. A minute, maybe three.
Laughter from surrounding student flats.
A couple in the next room argues and
our six-week separation drifts to nothing.
Night life on The Terrace breathes around us.
Scramble of skin meeting skin, face to face,
stomach to stomach. The scent of sensuality.
And the end of the night.
And the going home for breakfast.
So many breakfasts these thirty years,
though none with the taste of Percival
Street
where unwashed sheets and failing curtains
defied the boundaries we thought we knew.
Laurice Gilbert
Safe
at Home
Night, and there
is nothing outside my bedroom window
No red
corrugated iron shed, by day ringing with the sound of Dad’s tools
No aviary of
zebra finches peeping into the kitchen window below
No fairy flowers
on the fuchsia, no posies on the hydrangea
No washing line
to swing from, kicking the top of Dad’s
birthday kowhai
No swing of
thick grey pipes from the council tip, carrying me high enough to reach
the wash-house roof
No square of
lawn piled high with leftover wood, sometimes a princess’s castle,
sometimes a pirate ship
No outside
toilet populated by whirling dervish daddy-long-legses
No
hole in the side fence where I slip past the leathery taupata to visit Jeannie,
who
feeds me chocolate cup cakes
and Robinson’s lime cordial when Mum is in hospital
No hill where
the Governor-General lives surrounded by pine trees; where a Bad
Thing happened to a lady so we are forbidden
to play in the spicy darkness with the
cushioned
floor; where the policemen check up on you if you do
It is night so
there is nothing outside my bedroom window. Except, of course, for
passing spaceships flashing their comforting
red and green lights.
Laurice Gilbert
