Kia ora Kindlingers – this month’s issue comes following a self-imposed retreat outside of the city, a twenty-seventh birthday and the publishing of one of my poems on 4th Floor Journal’s 2025 publication Survival.

I wrote ‘Survival is a trend’ back in March and the Whitireia Publishing students have been caring for it all year in order to publish it this month!

If you’d like to read my piece, you can click on the link here.

The poem is from our retreat in Kawakawa Bay in an Unyoked cabin and the story I wrote following a stint of being an ambulance driver for a local TV show.

Happy reading <3

We arrived and the sun met us at the gate to let us in
This cabin was a copy of the other one
the one from two years ago
 
Behind cupboards, we dispatched our goods
did away with shirts and meandered around
the edge of our self-enforced retreat
 
Weaving between the shadows of great trees
we looked for a hammock
—or a secret to stumble into
 
The sheen of sunscreen reflected the river
and the canopy and the birds
I saw myself two days from now, breathing easier
on the other side of the fence
 
Doe-eyed sheep watched us from the riverbank
Broken sticks told the forest I wasn’t to be feared
—No hammock, no secrets
 
We walked to the boundary, about-faced
Took turns as navigator of mud, roots and tree trunks
—This was a different kind of city
 
Though we were gentle and our voices soft
people tucked themselves away on our approach
We were foreign bodies long since belonging
 
Secrets safe and hammocks invisible
someone approached us
brave or held up by commute, the city stood still
—and so did we
 
A hedgehog more alive than the dead ones in our garden
peeked at us mid-step
its frosted tips bleached from moss-covered daybeds
 
Inclining our heads in a kind of deference
we passed how we would a cyclist on a rural road
and it reacted in kind — spreading its spiney fingers
—a gesture recognised in any language
 
The sun met us once more at the edge of the clearing
took us back to our hovel and left us there to
conclude there were no hammocks in the trees
—but there were secrets to be revealed

Someone puts a hand on my shoulder – it’s warm through my t-shirt. My eyes are shut and there’s a faint breeze on my face, a car nearby.

Voices talk over me. The warmth from my shoulder moves to my wrist. More talking.

I’m trying to figure out where I am. I rack my mind for doctor’s appointments.

I remember having breakfast – toast with avocado and tomato. I dropped Vincent at the bus stop, then—

Cool air on my stomach. Scissors through fabric.

I made this dress once years ago out of scraps from my mother’s sewing box. I sewed the different fabrics into one big kaleidoscopic sheet on the floor and laid my pattern over it. When I cut through a seam, the scissors would catch – blunt from years of use.

The scissors were caught on something. Then hands, fabric ripping.

A car horn blasts, my head is pounding, pounding, pounding. It spreads to my collarbone, my side, my leg. I’m a slow, strobing beam. Someone applies pressure to my side.

Vincent had slammed the door when he got out. So hard it had affected the pressure in the car – it had clapped against my ears. Had he said a word the whole way to the bus stop?

They roll me onto my good side, guide me back where they’ve laid a sheet. I hadn’t noticed how hard the ground had been. The bitumen is warm, the sun is glaring, I’m shivering.

You got her?

Yep, ready?

One, two, three, lift.

I’m off the ground. I’m weightless. I don’t care where I am. I’m untouchable, untethered.

I’m eight years old and I’ve woken up in my father’s arms. I don’t remember falling asleep, only getting into the car. I shut my eyes and loll my head against his chest.

Only once he’s put me to bed do I peek through my lashes. He’s smiling, watching me pretend to sleep.

‘I know you’re awake, Gracie.’

I shut my eyes again.

‘Good night beautiful girl. Sweet dreams.’ He kisses me on the forehead and turns out the light.

I open my eyes, and the sun is blinding.

‘Can you hear me, Grace? I’m a paramedic, we’re taking you to North Shore hospital.’

I think I move my head.

‘Okay. Can you squeeze my fingers?’ That warm hand again. ‘Try again for me?’

I’m trying to do what she’s asking, but the connection is slow.

‘Attagirl,’ the warm hand squeezes my shoulder. I shiver.

‘We’re going to pop you into the ambulance now. You’ve been in a nasty crash, but you’re doing just fine. You got the oxygen, Ben?’

I crashed my car? Vincent will be beside himself— Vincent. He’d told me he needed time. To not call him.

I could call Warren. Warren! The morning came back to me in flashes. We’d argued about Warren. He’d text me before Vincent had left for work. He was usually more careful than that. Vincent had handed me my phone, and I’d seen Warren’s message sitting plain-as-day on my lockscreen.

You’ve been sleeping with Warren?

I was going to tell you.

He’d packed his bags, called his sister. Drop me at the bus. I need time. Don’t call me.

I love you, Vincent. It was a mistake.

No, it was my mistake loving you. I knew you weren’t really over your ex-husband, but I married you anyway. My mistake.

Sirens, alarm bells, a ringing in my ears.

Oxygen flows through the mask and I’m ashamed to be breathing something so pure.

I’d sat at the bus stop and called Warren. He’d heard me crying and hung up without a word – never one to be relied on when it came to emotional turmoil. Purely physical, he’d said. Watching Vincent leave had been physical. Like removing an organ.

I called in sick at the library and went home. I was sick. I knowingly hurt the people I loved.

I drank until I fell into the walls and I was too numb to cry.

Vincent visited. He brought my glasses and the books from my bedside table at home. Sometimes when he thought I was sleeping he would talk, he sounded nervous.

He’d been having dreams about Warren. About killing him. Feeding him poisoned food or pushing his head underwater on a fishing trip. The first one had come to him the night before he’d found out.

Then he’d started having dreams about killing me. About injecting air into my veins, slicing my throat with his grandfather’s letter opener, or dragging me behind his car.

Each time he spoke he described different dreams. More dreams than there had been nights. He always worked himself up to the point of tears. The nurses would whisper about how sweet it was to see a husband cry at his wife’s bedside. How much he must love me.

I was falling asleep one night when I heard a nurse come in to check my IV. I opened my eyes to find Vincent gripping the bag of fluid, staring down at me, eyes wet.

‘Get out,’ I rasped.

Without a word, he let go of the bag, walked out of the ward and left the hospital.

The nurses whispered about what a horrible wife I was, how I’d sent him away. I shivered, but I agreed with them.