Reasons

The night is a black shoe box.

These are only borrowed landscapes,

this hill, this path, this neck.

We walk down for a dollar a breath.

We take and take and give nothing back

but tired glances and unsaid apologies.

How is it that this thought

is louder than any other thought?

This nauseous century longer

than any before?

There are ghosts left and right,

and there's nothing to do.

And we haven’t got the time.

This is the light in the bulb,

the boil in the kettle,

this is the whole thing

and the thing expansive.

Oh please let there be reasons

for things outside of themselves.

Because we all get smaller together.

And everything smelling good is trying to die.

Because there are questions,

and there are questions.

And there are answers,

and there are answers.

-

What do I want to say?

The voice in which I talk to the dog

is truer than this.

Ruben Mita is a poet, musician and science student living in Pōneke. He has a passion for fungi, has been published in Starling, Takahē, Tarot and Landfall, and won the 2022 Story Inc. Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters.