blue hours

after Amy Key

there is love and not-love lodged

as a small feather in my throat

I cough it up on a blue morning

take the feather as a song to my mouth

know it bodily and

notice what accrues

it sounds like desire in the early morning

when you are free to be consumed by it

the pigment of blue is just so

it allows you to walk into it

what I have witnessed

in this blue version of a life 

standing at the shoreline

holding tight to my body

what do you tend to

underneath a world that is changing colour

I reach for the shared feeling

like twin violets and pluck from the roots

you have my attention

you flower, you unknowable absentee

I only dream of you

I barked through the night wanting

awoke on afternoon wings

a bluish stain on my bedsheets

feelings sloshed inside me like

a bad meal

I felt language rearrange me

then leave me behind

on the hot driveway of my youth

I saw my own future

and left it behind

Stacey Teague (Ngāti Maniapoto/Ngāpuhi) is a writer, editor and teacher living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.