Aroha Witinitara
Passing
after ‘passing as nonbinary’ by essa may ranapiri
We were on our way out of The Warehouse,
three sets of jandals slapping against the concrete,
just stepping into the entryway, with its glass walls
like a greenhouse and a row of fans on display.
They were blasting full force, moving around the stale air.
All the motors buzzing like a little mechanical choir.
Someone’s kid stood in front of one, yelling into the blades.
Their voice was projected outward, a loud robotic warble.
We were almost outside when the woman stepped into our path.
Mum and Gran stopped to say hello, so I had to stop too.
I stood there sweating, adjusting the airbed in my arms as it started to get heavy.
Then the words:
and who is this dashing young man?
It was meant as a compliment and it landed like one.
Two words, powerful enough to reach into my spine and straighten out the crick always there.
It landed, but only for a few precious seconds, before they started laughing:
No no no, this is our daughter, our granddaughter.
Thinking about it makes me want to feed my entire body into one of those fans. Bow down to its oscillating face and feed it long ribbons of my flesh to churn
out
into a bunch of little squares, rainbow-coloured confetti. Small and slippery like a handful of glitter thrown
out
all the garbled pieces like a lolly scramble, the best part of the birthday party, thrown up into the clouds. I could reverberate, all the pieces of me turned
out
into the atmosphere. Every molecule of my body moving in tandem, a slow constant drift through the galaxy going
out
out
stretching impossibly thin but never breaking.
I’ll find my place
here along the edges.
Wētā
Wētā hitched a ride into the house with a load of laundry.
We were sat on the couch
paying most of our attention to a rerun of Shortland Street on the TV and folding
stacks of towels, kiddie clothes, bed sheets
building up our washing empire on every surface.
We were almost finished when Trinity screamed
flung a dark body into the air and
sent a tower of t-shirts crashing to the floor.
He was immobile on the ground, small and solid like a stone.
I knelt before him, on the hardwood floor, hoping he was okay.
I took a supermarket catalogue from the arm of the couch and curled it into a cozy scoop.
He reared up on hind legs revealing thick black stripes along his underside
the spines along the back of his legs rustled.
Trinity’s voice from the kitchen:
Holy shit, I think it bit me, like... I can see puncture marks and everything. Do Wētā even have teeth? Aroha, can you Google that for me?
Then, Mum appeared in the doorway, as if by magic.
She looked down at me on the floor
left hand on her hip, a pink Sistema lunch box in the right.
What’s all this racket about?
With a roll of her eyes, she took over, stooped down
and nudged him into the lunchbox with one expert flick of the wrist.
Gently carried him to the back door, and sluiced him out
into the garden, where he belonged.
Aroha Witinitara is a student at Victoria University. They are originally from the Wairarapa but live in Wellington now. You can find more of their work in PŪHIA, Salient, takahē and elsewhere.