thoughts.doc [password protected]

some people write to fossilise their ideas / but if no one reads them / how will they last / if a tree falls in a forest / and no one sees the root break through the earth / will it still make u cry? / like this document / in which i painstakingly understand my own heart / and map out the quickest routes to fonua i should go to but don’t recognise / slice at men with no blood in their veins / will all these three hundred and twenty-six thousand one hundred and eleven words / disappear when i do / since i am the only person / who knows the password 

Rhegan Tu’akoi is a Tongan and Pākehā writer and poet based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She is from the village of Holonga, Tongatapu and has been published in many spaces, most recently in Poetry New Zealand (2021 - 2023) and No Other Place to Stand.