New verse by Wellington writer Helen Heath.
That’s it
We kiss goodbye in the morning –
a peck on the cheek and that’s it.
Then the phone call, like a bad movie.
The next time I kiss you goodbye
you are cold and still, and that’s it.
Afterwards it’s mostly paperwork
– the big events are ruled by bureaucrats.
I am alone with a freezer full of casseroles.
I wash one plate, one glass, one knife, one fork.
The carpet is a cloud that barely holds me
as I walk across it, any minute I may slip
through in an endless freefall.
Helen Heath, 2018
From the new collection Are Friends Electric? by Helen Heath (Victoria University Press, $25), available at Unity Books.
Helen Heath
Helen Heath is the author of Are Friends Electric?, her second collection of verse, published in June 2018 by Victoria University Press. Her first book, Graft, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book for Poetry Award in 2013. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Helen was born in Lower Hutt in 1970.
