only

to forget the names of the world

to step on grass and know only its greenness

to bend towards water     and know only its mirror-shine

(      i am only breathing         i am only growing         i am only here          )

the name of me could be the same as the name    of anything else    you are

known to me only as the one       who kisses me           in the secret places

the one who cleans         meticulous       all the soup from the bowl    the one

who stoops to photograph         the other one         the one    under the tree       

spore-ripe    and round                  bright as     an apple                

which itself        is only brightness

particles

people are lighting small fires on our beach & the smoke rises

up to join the sea-mist, which moves in steady

screens across the water, apricot coloured,

& the waves gust toward us in great unrelenting

blocks, square-edged, like they’re computer-generated,

& children run into them, unafraid, tossing kelp

over their shoulders like satchels,

& people walk in pairs through the filtered light, & i think

of you in our brand new room, of our clothes

wrapped up together in the drawers & of the little lists

we wrote, nail up the shelf, vacuum behind the bed,

& of the tide-pool filling up in front of me, &

all this new time pouring in through my sides —

& how       at home you are waiting for me —

&  how         clinging to the dream-substrate

we will sleep together again, tonight,   

Margo Montes de Oca (she/her) is a twenty-three year old student from Te-Whanganui-a-Tara. She is working on a collaborative children’s book and hopes that having this information out in the world will mean it is finished soon. Some of her poetry has been published in Starling.