New verse by Wellington writer Freya Sadgrove.

Georgie Porgie

I wanna kiss you and make you cry         obviously

I find you dangerously unsentimental     in fact I worry

that you might be harbouring a small violence in your daily life

such as     such as muttering insults at the elderly

or writing scathing reviews of high school plays

or like   discreetly growing a tumour     out of revenge

I require you to learn from my softness     otherwise

I will accidentally learn your hardness         ah

you can’t talk about boys and hardness without thinking about   you know

and you have a really nice   you know

but that’s not the issue at hand   so to speak     not right now anyway

come to my house later         come   to my house

and I will put your   issue     in my hand

it’s not exactly a problem that you don’t love me

it’s just surprising : look at me     I’m startlingly lovely

not visually so much as                   theoretically

I took a lot of cheap advice and now I love myself too much

it offends the elderly and it bores the young

and you     it does something to you     but you don’t like having things done to you

so I stop doing it         I just hover at your bedroom door not doing it

Freya Daly Sadgrove, 2017

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