Rachel Lockwood
the spell
When I’m in the water I always think about my aunty,
summer evenings spent treading water in the twilight,
sunset colours settling on our freckles.
Throw off the cares of the day!
Refuse to worry about your bikini line, or what shifts under your touch.
Everything smells of salt, which is enough to invite us in.
Stand in the doorway of this night
we use words like an enchantment —
salinity, buoyant, current, gyre, deep channel, tide, periwinkle.
We summon her red-haired image —
petunia, jalebi, teddy, Astaire, tenor, nightcap, typewriter.
When I’m in the water it’s easy to think about the women I miss,
the ones just beyond my reach.
When I move my hands under the water,
I only occasionally touch someone else.
lounge in Kelburn, We Ate Greek Salad
I was going to ask you for a lighter.
I’d stood outside, it had been raining and the sun was setting,
and that’s how looking at you made me feel, like I had to comment on the weather,
like I could make any conversation be happening in a dark hallway in my mind,
like your beauty was a pearl net over my hair.
I had come back inside to put candles on the birthday cake,
and you made me shiver amethyst all over,
you rose a hot itch in my throat,
you were wearing a green jacket every time I saw you,
and I wanted to tear it into a thousand pieces,
I wanted to put my teeth on your skin without breaking anything.
Now I look away from pictures with your face.
You had a lighter. And we sang.
Rachel Lockwood is a Hawke’s Bay gal and a secondary school teacher in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She has been previously published in Starling, Mayhem, and Sweet Mammalian, among others.