Spaceships

I walk the steep way home with you,

crowd-noise a seashell over our ears.

Red light incoming, slow slide

into headlights, our outlines

twenty meters down

from the roof I turned around

to see you climbing on, with a guy

you must have met at the party,

your shoulders familiar smears

against the angle of the city,

beers beside you, roads behind you

scattered like a forming planet.

I stood so full of pride

for recognising

who was climbing on the roof.

I can see you like hair in my face.

I’m walking with you many years.

At the end of the driveway, there’s

another sound of waves – people

drift further down the hill,

whispering and kicking at leaves.

You don’t say bye. You never do.

The sky is thick with windows

to ceilings in other rooms.

You crash on my couch,

I launch myself

sideways up your stairs.

This life is like dipping my head

into a small bubble. An astronaut’s helmet.

If I don’t do something, it disappears.

Pippi Jean Pippi Jean is studying in Te-Whanganui-A-Tara. She is a founding editor of Symposia and her most recent poetry can be found in Starling, NZ Poetry Shelf and Ōrongohau: best New Zealand poems. She is routinely over-interested in small birds.