urban dancer

i hadn’t even made it / to the cross / -ing before a flicking wrist stopped me short / unapologetically / cutting time and stalling pedestrians / in half / beckoning the delicious lines and eddies / of the body / in rebellion against a heeled corporate tempo / ever fixated on arrival / follow instead the secret / song of breathing and blood and / ask: what colour is oxygen / inside the mind? / exploding as dandelion / pollen and roe / dripping / lush as raupō in verdant strength / pregnant as the night with grapefruit blossom / or the red when i was born / that veined arc / of a wing holding the sun / a nude window / right before / my eyes / opened / the discipline and the tension and the fall / learning gravity / the world scuttles over concrete / magnetised / pawns on each gum-speckled tile / the little green man is not telling you to walk.

sudden-onset Kairos consciousness

after my gaze flew off an unexpected moon,

a future sprang forth in vertigo

rushed to me in that tiny slice

of stupor, I’m overcome 

with a nonfungible ache

to grab my room with both hands

rip into the wallpaper

extricating the if-onlys I cached there

remorse pooling in a sob, a dam 

where I’m supposed to breathe

because I can’t even see the stars

I’m so screentime-blinded

now that I’m looking in third-person,

maybe I do want to know myself all over

again, feel my heart rip against my ribcage

like I’ve never snagged it before

but this is not momentum, this groping

for a clean slate, for miraged redemption

by dawn; this moment will lose gravity

as soon as the need for night vision ceases

for behold! the isles glitter with spider silk

distraction in the guise of abundance

tomorrow’s light will deface this moon

into pumice, rice cracker, pencil inkling

a coin beaconing in a deep well 

I’ve somehow arrived at to drink from.

Judy Zhang is wordsmithing, wielding a camera, and studying in Tāmaki Makaurau.