Ruby Solly
Dear Captain
The first time I go home,
it’s by looking into a whites aviation frame.
Recoloured pastel, in colours sea foam and mint.
Its opshop frame cracking
from years hung in a bathroom
in a different time.
I ask to go there in person,
but in this financial landscape
other things are coming first.
My mother throws handfuls of salt
into the bathtub.
Turns the lights off, and tells me to listen
to the rain on the tin.
I hear the water splash the rocks as my skin adapts
to the shallows.
The first time I learnt what the word quantum meant
it was about my own body. Playing under the table
as my mother spread out my whakapapa above me.
Sheets and sheets of white paper,
pulling me back in time.
She leans under and tells me my percentage,
I try to figure out what parts of me belong.
Maybe a hand,
maybe an arm.
The first time I did the haka
was in my school uniform
the hemmed waves of blue
rolling over my knees.
We sat in the octave about the boys,
a halo of sound
above the heads of our teachers
and parents.
I saw my father cry
for the second time in my life.
The first time I did the karanga
it was in a bar. We had no other place to mourn
so I called them in,
my voice cutting the room in two.
We were on the second floor
but I still felt their voices surging through me
from the ground up.
The first time I spoke Māori
I was in my high chair
pointing at the steaming kettle.
Mamauwa, mamauwa I said.
My parents looked lost
and praised the fact that I could make sounds
with my small mouth.
Rakatahi-Tū
Tuatahi
You say there is dirt under our nails
I say there is whenua under our skin.
See us cut our milk teeth
on all the things you mean but don’t say.
See us go where the wind feels the coldest.
See us go where it touches the face but not the back.
See us be pushed perpendicular
and survive with our tap roots held firm.
Tuarua
One day we’ll receive the family inheritance
moko rising from under the skin.
Soft hands callousing,
from the inside out
as our great-great-greats
work through the blood we all own,
through the river beds we all flow through.
Blue sheets waving dry in the wind,
getting ready to weave all the mattresses together,
till the whole floor is soft and holding.
I will reach out in the night,
and touch a hand that knows me.
I will breathe out in the night,
because for once I want to breathe back in.
Tuatoru
Some of us were born tired
and still sleep with clenched fists.
You promised me a korowai and gave me a blanket.
Watch me stitch it with feathers and give it to my children to bear.
I will not finish it in my lifetime, but I will work through their hands.
I will be let my spirit drift outside their homes,
peeping through the knots in the wood
to bare feet in the whare
and babies on the floor
exactly where they are meant to be.
Weaving us together
as they stitch through our open legs,
pulling one side of the whenua to the other.
You say there is dirt on my hands
I say to you
I am the dirt.
Ruby Solly is a Kai Tahu writer and musician living in Pōneke. She has been published in Sport, Landfall, Minarets and Mimicry amongst others. She recently wrote her first short film, ‘Super Special’, which was produced by Someday Stories and aims to teach young women about the awa atua and Māori views around menstruation. She is currently finishing off an album and a book and after that she is going to have a really really big nap.