Student poetry
Winner: Ellen Murray
Homecomings, or adrift
1. There is the Atlanta of before and the Atlanta of after.
2. Or rather, an Atlanta of many befores and many afters, a place incrementally shifting away from me until I finally put an ocean between us.
3. It’s easier, the loss, when you choose it.
4. Now, I live thousands of miles away, a swan dive into the Southern Hemisphere, but before we become stuck in the intractable present, let me tell you about the Atlanta of before.
5. You’re never properly dressed, too formal or not enough. The outfit, so perfectly planned, effortlessly cool where you live now, makes you look like a fourteen-year-old boy. You don’t know about the right brands, that bracelet everyone wears, the ugly one, a thousand dollars, are you sure?
6. You’re wearing too many layers again.
7. The summer air is like molasses, revolting, and yet sometimes—
8. Sometimes, you think it could catch you, that if you fell into its weight, you could float on a stream of its humid particles.
9. That is to say, when you miss a place, when you miss intangible things about it, sometimes the strangest things take on nostalgia’s sunset glows.
10. Where is the first fracture, when amorphous time divided into the first set of before and after?
11. Perhaps the summer I spent in Pittsburgh. I was seventeen, and it occurred to me that it might be the place, not me, that this buzzing beneath my skin might settle in a different climate.
12. I applied to eighteen colleges but not a single one in Georgia. I dreamed of New Haven but found myself in Los Angeles instead. I often think of who I might have been in New Haven, if the cold weather and staid, ivied atmosphere would have crystallized me in the worst, most neurotic version of myself.
Los Angeles
13. I thrived in Los Angeles. Although I complained about the lack of seasons, the sunshine and yoga cultivated a softer, contented picture of who I could become. By graduation, I even came to understand that LA does have its own seasons:
14. summer,
15. fake autumn,
16. second summer (hotter),
17. everyone decides to wear sweaters regardless of the temperature,
18. sort of drizzly,
19. For Your Consideration (awards season),
20. when the jacaranda trees flower and the entire city is purple,
21. May gray,
22. June gloom, and, unfortunately, wildfire season.
23. That is to say, sometimes it takes a long time to truly know a place.
24. Los Angeles is also a land of before and after. My leaving was punctuated by the pandemic, career setbacks, poor health, and my father’s premature death, so Los Angeles feels like a fairytale now, less a physical place, more an inaccessible time, one I couldn’t return to if I tried. There, I thought I was an adult, but I was only playing pretend. Now I am an adult, and I regret that final loss of innocence forged by my father's death.
25. If I returned, could I slip back into my life? I fear my friends have become acquaintances.
26. My cats are Angelenos, isn’t that strange? I adopted them two weeks before I left LA and carried them across the country and now across the world. They’re Angelenos, I’m from Atlanta, and now we all live in New Zealand. They don’t know that. For all they know, we’re in Cleveland. For them, maybe home is just me.
27. The feeling is mutual.
28. Let me tell you how I took that first step away from Atlanta. I wanted to apply to a college in California, and I couldn’t fabricate an essay about my love for Jesus for Pepperdine. I googled the best acting schools in Southern California, picked one, and that’s how I ended up in LA. When I grew tired of the eternal sunshine, I submitted a study abroad application to New Zealand, picking the university with the most gothic stock images.
29. So I ask you, is anything pre-determined? Would I always have found myself here—writing in a dingy pub closer to Antarctica than home—or do I have infinite paths, pruned each day by a series of heedless decisions.
30. Does it matter?
31. Because, somehow, the loveliest branchings of my life have been totally entropic detours.
New Zealand
32. The first time I came to New Zealand, I packed a suitcase of bohemian blouses and impractical shoes. Then autumn arrived, and my flat was so cold that the olive oil turned solid.
33. The quirks about a place that you come to know—how can I explain, to my friends from home, from Atlanta: the mushrooms I found growing inside one damp flat. The lack of central heating. A flat, first I must explain, is like an apartment, or well mine is more of a house, sort of a duplex, but they’re flats, everything is a flat until you buy a house, which could be a flat, and which, of course, you will never be able to do.
34. I’d like to buy a house.
35. I’d like to build a catio and feel my roots growing deep, not wide, an anchor against this constant motion.
36. After my father’s death, I dreamed my childhood home was swaying. The foundation had been irrevocably eroded, and I found I’d never feel still or secure again. And so we return to it, that home could be not a place but a person—but that person could go away. This is why there can only be the Atlanta of before and after, why the leaving doesn’t hurt the way you’d expect. I don’t miss a geographic place; I miss a place in time.
37. When I go back, I only see all the ways it has moved on without me.
Montana
38. My dad didn’t die at home. We were on vacation in Montana, so he died, the first time, in a hotel, and the second, in a hospital in Whitefish. It’s an idyllic tourist town, nestled beneath mountains, so you have to wait a long time to be seated for breakfast, even if you just left your father in the emergency room, but when the receptionist, the one who saw the paramedics and the stretcher and the lights and the ambulance, whispers to the hostess, she seats you immediately although she never makes eye contact again.
39. Also, everything on the menu has boysenberries for some reason.
40. Dying away from home is a logistical nightmare but also sort of convenient because none of the especially gruesome, traumatic stuff happens anywhere that you visit often. You just have to avoid medical dramas, sirens, and boysenberries.
41. Maybe we should stick to the present.
New Zealand
42. Let’s return to New Zealand. No one here sounds like me, their vowels stretched like a grimace. My Californicated vocal fry makes them laugh sometimes. It’s ok. I’m in on the joke, I guess.
43. The first time I returned to Atlanta during college, I was shocked by my family’s slight drawl. Each time I return, their vowels are a little rounder. I notice American accents now, too; we chew our words. Horrifying, I know.
44. Where are you from?
45. In Los Angeles, I was from Atlanta. In Atlanta, a suburb. In New Zealand, I tell people I’m from Los Angeles. It makes me sound cooler, and I want to close the distance between me and that version of myself.
46. Also, I think I sort of just like lying?
47. Sometimes, I just say, oh, from here, because, I’m not sure, ok? I pulled out my roots, and I keep planting them in shallow soil. It’s beautiful soil; I’ve seen incredible things: the southern lights, penguins, glaciers, but all that beauty and adventure require ceaseless motion.
48. Although, to be fair, the last person who asked where I came from meant which side of the hiking trail I’d parked on.
49. Oops.
Florida
50. I want to tell you about another place, just one more, I promise. Growing up, I spent summers and Christmas break in a seaside town on the Florida panhandle, but the context is all mixed up. Now it’s full of bachelorette parties and rich people with weird opinions about vaccines.
51. But then, before most of the homes had been built, it was a sandy strip of land full of rattlesnakes and feral cats. A trip to the Panama City Walmart, the closest store besides a Winn-Dixie, was a cause for celebration; my sister and I wandered around construction sites, crossing the highway and dodging leathered, tattooed men to buy candy from the nearest gas station. At summer’s end, I’d often return to Atlanta with a feral kitten.
52. My favorite time of year was hurricane season. My parents would fret about whether to evacuate, nailing boards on all the windows and bemoaning increasing insurance rates, but I loved the drama—the whipping wind, sand flying through the air and burning your skin, boardwalks collapsing beneath the encroaching ocean.
53. After the storms, great black volcanic rocks would wash up on the beach, along with the best seashells. Sometimes, I’d swim in the churning water, pushed down by a furious wave and unable to surface. Strangely, I rarely went to the beach during good weather. Childhood is so contrary.
New Zealand
54. Where I live in New Zealand, you’re never more than fifteen minutes away from a beach. Take your pick: cresting pearlescent dunes, roaring sea lions beneath soaring cliffs, echoing sea caves where penguins nest.
55. I don’t have a car, so I board the #8 bus. Sometimes I bring a beach chair; people look at me like I’m insane. There seems to be a way in which growing up American brands you as a sort of lunatic. Our culture of go-getting, ambitious extroversion reads as manic pretty much anywhere else. At home, I am an introvert. Here, an extrovert by nature of learned cultural expectations.
56. Sometimes, I stop mid-sentence.
57. Why am I still talking?
58. The poor Kiwi looks on at me with polite mortification.
59. Sorry.
60. I ’ve been socialized to fill silences.
61. I still want to travel the world. I want to live in more places, let my accent become indefinable, but I also want to let my roots grow deep. I want to settle this restlessness, to find a home, even if I don’t know yet what that means.
62. So, where does that leave me?
Atlanta
63. For now, I’ll end with a home I found. After my dad died, I began hiking. Atlanta was no longer the home of my childhood, so I began walking, first on trails near home, the muddy forest behind my middle school, then a bit further, hopping along mossy stones beside the Chattahoochee River, and then even further, into the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
64. It is quiet, except the occasional bird calls, the force of my exhalations, my boots squelching against damp soil. The sunlight peaks through verdant leaves, dappling the forest floor.
65. I miss that, the light, it’s not the same elsewhere.
66. Everything is profoundly alive,
67. buzzing,
68. humming,
69. little insects colliding against my salty skin.
70. The trees, I so often think, feel like a hug. They’re very old. They’ve been here forever. They’ll probably be here when I return.
71. Some things do remain, I suppose.
Student fiction
Winner: Stella Weston
Highlights
‘What if I hate it? What if people are mean, or they don’t get me, and what if the classes are too hard and I hate it?’
Riley’s mum just hugged her again, ‘If it isn’t right, you’ll just come back home.
It sounded so simple put like that, as if everything was reversible.
So Riley went, walked away from her mum, into the airport with only three gates. Her bags were overweight, both of them, and she paid the $80 because her mum had to leave, and what would she actually even take out? How could anyone fit their whole lives into suitcases that were under 23kg?
In March, the morning after someone’s drunken hand had smashed their flat’s mailbox so it didn’t open in the front anymore, Riley called her mum. She held it together until the inevitable, ‘Riles, you sound off, you alright, pet?’
And Riley cried. Cried on the phone, below the one window that didn’t serve any of its intended purposes, below the photos of her high school friends peeling off the walls. She cried about her politics lecture that day, the group discussions that only rubbed it in that Riley didn’t get it, and didn’t really even know what it was. They all spoke some secret language that Riley only seemed to know the bones of, missing the crucial organs, the flesh and blood – a definition of breathas, or who Heidegger was. Riley thought the others all might have taken some summer school paper on the local dialect, maybe had some extra classes on how to keep warm wearing only jorts, how to pack a bag that weighed less than 23kg.
Riley told all of this to her mum through harsh sobs, and mumbles of ‘No, I’m fine.’
Her mum listened to all of this through breaths that sounded like they got caught in her throat.
Riley was waiting for the invite home, because this wasn’t right, and she hated it.
Instead she got: ‘I know pet, but everyone feels like this, whether they act like it or not. Can you try and find something good for me? What’s a highlight?’
‘I don’t know, calling you?’
Her mum laughed, ‘That’s nice to hear, but give me something else. Your neighbours? Any good?’
So far Riley’s only interaction with their neighbours was when they had taken Riley’s flat’s recycling bin off the road on one of the first Tuesday mornings. Riley had been with her flatmate when they spotted their bin in the wrong driveway, their house number clearly spray painted down one side. Her flatmate had just laughed, and then Riley had held her bag while she darted through the neighbours open door, and ran back out a moment later, a half-full box of Coronas in her arms.
‘We haven’t really met them.’
‘Alright love, why don’t you get some sleep? Have a hot shower, make sure you’re keeping warm, I’ll send you some money for some fruit, maybe some pears, would that be good?’
‘Yeah, mum, thank you. Love you.’
Riley had gone to bed shivering. Nothing stayed warm in this place.
It was August. The coldest month. Riley’s chore on the chore chart was to clean the mould out of the shower. She took a sick pleasure in this, down on her hands and knees in just her underwear. A thin, cold, blue and white cloth in her left hand, half empty spray bottle of exit mould in her right. The mould was especially bad right now, because Riley hadn’t done her chore in three weeks. It crawled up the back wall of the shower, fingers of it reaching, slowly staining the white rim. No one had thought to clean it while Riley was away, but nor did they expect her to do it now she was back. Someone had to though.
Riley thought the bleach particles must’ve developed tiny claws, digging and stinging at her eyes. She wondered if someone had exit-moulded the church last week, maybe that was why she hadn’t been able to see. She didn’t know why it had been at a church. Her mum had never been religious. Maybe the bleach particles were crawling down her throat, sinking those claws into her lungs, ripping tiny holes and letting all the air out. She thought it would be as easy as tearing the sail of a sailboat, or ripping a butterfly wing in half.
Riley hoped her funeral wouldn’t be at a church.
She scrubbed the mould until her fingernail ripped through the cloth from where she was pressing it. Until the particles claw their way through that hole, up her fingers and hands, reaching every inch of her until everything has been stripped away and she is only bones.
It wasn’t until November, after all their exams had finished, that her flatmates stopped treating Riley like a skeleton. They sat her down on the couch outside, the perpetually damp navy one they had bought off Facebook marketplace and carried through the streets. That had been a good day. That had been a highlight.
Riley thought they were going to yell at her, or tell her to stop moping around the house, or maybe stage an intervention and commit her to some institution for people who don’t leave their rooms anymore.
They just gave her the dry spot on the couch. Put a drink into her hand, a Corona. Coronas had become their flat drink. That was a highlight.
They turned up the speaker they’d been given by the head girl of Riley’s high school, when she had spotted Riley in a club, dragged her back to her flat, yapping the whole way about why that particular club sucked, and was only for freshers, and oh wait was Riley a fresher? No, no, yes much better to be flatting, and did she know that bars were always better than clubs, but not as good as house parties, but only if they have good music, and actually, wait, did Riley even have a good speaker? That had been a highlight.
One of the guys next door leant over the fence, laughed at their box of Coronas, the way the girls were arrayed over the one couch in the weak sunlight. He yelled something about it being a beautiful day to drink, so one of the others invited him over. He and his flatmates jumped the fence after tossing over a few mouldy beanbags, and Riley wondered if she should offer them the exit-mould.
No one yells at Riley, or shows up with a straight jacket.
They just pass her another beer, lie down on the beanbags, which are drying out in the sun, and ask her to settle an argument about Hobbes and Locke.
This is a highlight.
Staff poetry
Winner: Anna Williams
Tumbleweed
‘You are like tumbleweed’ he said,
not kindly,
‘You never settle anywhere’.
He is worried about being abandoned again.
With his emotional baggage,
and mine,
we could fill an airport trolley quite easily.
I checked Google.
Tumbleweed’s have roots.
They have a place of being.
A place where they belong,
and then they move on.
Exploring,
going where the wind takes them,
drifting with the seasons,
until
they stop,
get stuck,
settle,
belong again.
Staff fiction
Winner: Jennifer Haugh
HOMECOMING
Nikki wakes up when the kid behind her kicks the back of her seat again. She’s already politely asked both the kid and the parents to stop this, and has less politely asked them again, plus has glared at the kid a few times (she’s too scared of the parents to glare at them). Nothing has worked. If there were longer left in the flight she’d have to screw up her courage again, but it seems they’ve started their descent into Auckland, so she decides to just put up with it. She was already grumpy anyway.
Outside the window, dawn has dawned. It’s still very early in the morning, but who’s counting? She’s been in no-man’s-land for the past 30 hours. No-person’s-land, presumably. Except that there were an awful lot of people there, none of whom she wanted to have anything to do with, although she tolerated the ones who brought her food. Otherwise, she’s tried very hard to keep to herself, focus on one thing at a time, not think too far ahead or too far behind, just keep going.
And now she’s nearly there. She cranes her head to catch her first glimpse of New Zealand after seventeen years away. Seventeen years! A lifetime, really. She can barely remember the child she was when she left at 22, confused and angry from the wounds of adolescent angst, which in hindsight were but scratches. Nothing compared to the deep gouges of the last few years. But still. Coming back was not in her plan. She’s been a Londoner for most of her adult life. She thought she’d be there forever. Inhaling the rush of the city, negotiating the crowded streets, mastering the Underground. Wine, theatre, work. Lights, noise, action. A woman on the go.
Not anymore. She is now a woman decidedly off the go. A woman on the stop? A woman who went? Whatever it is, she can’t believe how cliched it has turned out to be. Infidelity has put paid to her relationship. The ongoing fallout from Covid and world politics has lost her her job. These things together have decimated her finances, and all of it collectively has ruined whatever social life she once had. And it’s made her tired. Although that could just be getting older. She’s nearly 40. She’d call it a mid-life crisis, but she’s dubious she’ll make anywhere near 80.
And now she’s come back to New Zealand. “Home,” she supposes, although it’s hard to feel it. She wasn’t fully formed when she left. Whatever she thought she’d built since then has dissolved. She has no concept of what she expects from this small country she was so eager to be rid of all that time ago. But her parents are getting old.
In Auckland it is overcast but warm and humid. Coming straight from a European winter it’s a surreal feeling. She’s amused to find that the commute from International to Domestic terminals still has the option to walk the painted line, just as it did when she was going in the other direction all those years ago. At least she has a proper suitcase now, not the heavy backpack she took with her back in ‘08.
She has to wait all day for her flight south, and it is supremely boring. And panic-inducing. She tries to remind herself that airports are not a representation of normal life, and that she is currently very, very tired; it doesn’t really help. The food selections are limited and expensive, and when she finally makes a decision on which sad option to try, she learns that they’re bland as well. The Kiwi accent grates on her; every time the voiceover tells her “Please do not leave your beggage unatteended" she wants to poke her eyes out with the toothpick that was holding her horrible wrap together, even though she knows she sounds like that too. She gets stuck sitting next to a mansplainment of young men all trying to outdo each other in their expertise as to what exactly is wrong with the Warriors. She doesn’t know what sport the Warriors play, but she’ll be ecstatic if she never has to hear another word about them in her life. What is she doing here?
When her flight to Queenstown is finally called she boards with a sense of trepidation and relief. Whatever waits for her at home, at least it’s not Auckland airport.
Her Mum is there to meet her, and it’s by far the best part of the entire trip. Her Mum came to London a few times during her time there, and they’ve kept up by phone call/Skype/Zoom, but there is nothing like your Mum enfolding you in the world’s biggest hug when you’ve come from the other side of the world. Especially when your life on the other side of the world has just fallen apart. She cries. Her Mum cries. It’s an epic tearfest. “This is why I didn’t bring Dad,” Mum whispers into her ear. “He wouldn’t know where to put himself!” Nikki doesn’t mind. She can’t wait to see Dad, but she’s also grateful to have Mum to herself for a bit. It seems that every member of her family and their dog – literally – are turning up tomorrow to see her. She’ll barely see Mum until they all go away again.
The drive home to Alex passes more quickly than she expected. The Gorge is spectacular, although the number of people around has clearly increased significantly. Cromwell still has its fruit! Clyde has grown insanely. And then they pull into Alex, now with bigger supermarkets and much fancier public toilets, but the hills. The hills are just the same. The clock is just the same. She feels a pang that she wasn’t expecting.
And then they are home, and the house is just the same, smaller than in her memory, but she had expected that; Dad hugs her and he smells like Dad and she’d forgotten he even had a scent but there it is, and it all feels very strange but also actually quite nice and so far away from London and did the last seventeen years even exist? Were they real? Is she dreaming?
She doesn’t dream, in fact: when she finally takes her exhausted body to bed she’s asleep possibly even before her head hits the pillow and she doesn’t wake until fourteen hours later. A floofy orange cat has curled up next to her. She does not know this cat. But it is very schmoozy and snuggly, so she lies in bed and lets herself be purred at while she tries to prepare herself for the day ahead.
She’s in her childhood bedroom. It’s not exactly as she left it. Her stuff is still mostly there – the books in the bookshelf, the ceramic piggybank she didn’t keep money in but instead used to hide her jewellery from her sister (it occurs to her now what a terrible hiding place this was), the laundry basket full of her stuffed-toy friends – but it’s been added to over the years. Her nephew and niece have left their mark. There are a few squishmallows on top of the pile of friends. A half-finished Lego project – a battleship of some kind? – on the desk. A set of stacking baskets holding a mishmash of toys, socks, board games and – is that a spatula? She shifts the cat slightly and looks closer. It is a spatula.
She hears a car pull into the driveway and the unmistakeable sound of children bickering. In this case, the squabble seems to be over who gets to hug Aunty Nikki first. Perhaps now is a good time to get up.
The house gradually fills. Her sister Beth and family, coming from just down the road, were the first to arrive, a world war being narrowly avoided by First Hug going to both her niece and nephew together. She’s met them electronically, watched them grow from tiny babies into adorable toddlers into sassy, street-talking tweens, but meeting them in person is something else. They feel real in a way that they never have before. She’s actually an aunt! Her brother Phil arrives from Dunedin in time for lunch, cousins appear as if out of the woodwork; some of them have kids too. John from the neighbouring farm turns up. They genuinely do all bring their dogs: she counts six in total, or maybe it’s seven, they won’t stay still long enough to count. The lawn is full of yipping and children shouting and more running than she can comprehend.
After lunch she is left sitting at the table with Beth, Phil, John, and cousin Chase, whose real name is Matthew but who has been called Chase ever since he was three, when he spent an afternoon chasing sheep around the paddock shouting “Chase! Chase!” She can’t believe how normal it feels to be sitting with them all. Like no time has passed since they were kids.
They watch the new generation rush about shooting water pistols at the dogs. “Remember that time we went up the back of the farm on the four-wheeler?” says Phil. “And that little foxy of Uncle Joe’s ran behind us yapping all the way?”
Nikki chuckles. She hasn’t thought of that day for years, but it’s clear as a bell in her mind now. They’d taken a picnic, a clutch of eggs that they wanted to fry on the rocks, and a few scones ferreted from the kitchen. Frying the eggs hadn’t worked. So they’d lit a fire in amongst the rocks and tried to bake them. Of course that hadn’t worked either. They’d ended up feasting on slightly burnt scones.
“Who the hell let all five of us ride the four-wheeler together?” says Beth. “Or just take off for the day by ourselves like that? No way I’d let my kids hare off up there unsupervised!”
“Lucky we didn’t set the tussock on fire,” says John.
“Do you remember that day we had the pool out, and we made up that whole synchronised swimming routine and made all the adults watch it?” says Nikki, as it suddenly comes to mind.
“Yeah, and we had to keep starting again because you kept doing a handstand when you were supposed to be jumping in the air!” says Beth.
Nikki doesn’t remember that part, but she does remember doing the routine. The rubbery wrinkles of the pool’s bottom, pressed into the grass below by the weight of the water, the contours of the earth beneath her feet. The brightness of the sun on the surface. The way splashes dried so quickly on the concrete that you could get out of the pool and watch your footsteps evaporate as you walked backwards down the path. She’s taken aback by the immediacy of it all. These memories run deep.
Later, they’re all inside again, the house full of noise. The kids have started a game where they say words backwards, and are running around shouting “Toidi! Toidi!” at each other. The smallest one, just two, has no idea what’s happening but has found a word she likes and is dancing around singing “Diputs!” Mum is in stitches. Phil has joined in and is trying to catch any passing child with the offer of “Maerceci?” but the kids won’t stand still long enough to figure it out. Nikki suddenly feels completely overwhelmed. It’s not that it’s too much, exactly, it’s just…the emotion of it all. It’s a mixture of love and gratitude and regret and uncertainty and…something she can’t put her finger on.
John catches her eye and gestures to the door with a tip of his head. She follows him gratefully.
Up on the ridge John turns off the bike’s engine and the silence of the land fills the space. She climbs off, taking off her helmet and hanging it from the handlebars, then turns to look out across the landscape. It’s dry: the grass is mostly golden, a few green smudges here and there where there’s been irrigation. But the rocks. Stretching for miles, clusters of rocks, some smaller, some larger, spread in a pattern that’s not really a pattern. It looks barren, but also beautiful. The stark splendour of this rocky ground, the home of her childhood, the place she hasn’t been in so many years. Most of the farm is John’s, now. Her parents have sold it to him over the years, as they’ve grown older. They know he’ll take good care of it. But up here, you can’t see the boundaries, you can’t see where one farm becomes another. You can just see this rocky wilderness, stretching for miles.
She wanders over and sits on one of the stones, warm from the sun. She thinks about the centuries of comings and goings in this place. The Māori people, about whom she knows not nearly enough. The earliest colonisers, taking the land for their own, trying to build lives for themselves a world away from their birthplace. Her mother’s family, building up the farm over generations. Joy, grief, terror, elation, all of it silently witnessed by these hills and these rocks.
John sits quietly next to her.
“I don’t know who I am, now,” she says. “Being back here…I thought I would feel like a stranger, but I don’t. I feel just like the child I was before I left. Less angry,” she grins, “but…everything’s still the same. I fit right back in with you all. It’s not what I expected. It’s lovely,” she continues, “but…it feels like the whole London part of my life just never happened. Like, what was the point? Seventeen years, just…thrown out the window.”
A cicada starts chirping somewhere nearby.
“I felt like that after my divorce,” he said. “Ten years of living, loving and knowing another person, building something that was meant to be the future, and then…what was it for? It was just gone. But I’ve learnt,” he bends down and plucks a blade of dry grass, “it’s all still there. It’s still part of me. And everything you did and everything you learnt in London – it’s all still there in you. You’re not the same person you were when you left. It will all feed into whatever lies ahead. It’s a part of your being.”
Nikki laughs and nudges him. “When did you get to be so wise?” He doesn’t answer, just a wry smile, and they sit together looking out over the rocks. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s okay to feel she belongs here, even though she so recently thought she belonged in London. Maybe belonging is what you bring to it. The whole you, with all the parts of you that jostle up against each other and squirm and snuggle and dance.
She has no idea what she’s going to do with her future. But for today, she decides, it’s okay to let it go.
And the hills shimmer around her.
Alumni poetry
Winner: Tui Bevan
Somewhere to Never Forget
Even after all this time
I can still hear Dad say,
Never forget where you came from.
It was easy for him -
he was from over there
and then lived here.
He grew up with cousins
uncles, heritage, traditions,
Vikings, ancient kings
and Danish folk songs
that came along in his head,
to be sung half a world away,
about Denmark, his birthland,
singing aldrig glemmer vi,
hvorfra vi kom
- We will never forget
where we came from -
forever ingrained in his mind.
I grew up in what he called
a young country, full
of competing world views:
British colonialism,
revisionist history, media culture,
whakapapa and Te Ao Māori.
But Mum and Dad travelled light
leaving their backstories behind
when they emigrated.
I still search for clues, vital pieces,
needing to build a somewhere
so I too have one, to never forget.
Alumni fiction
Winner: Ellen Bernstein
Being and Belonging
Ebony was a child of eight when a dog handler brought a police dog to her school and demonstrated all the things the black Alsatian was trained for: barking on command, finding hidden things, running and jumping over obstacles, and then out on the playing field chasing down a man in a padded suit and pulling him to the ground by his arm. The police officer’s navy overalls with munty black boots were the coolest thing Ebony had ever seen someone wear to work.
That was the day Ebony knew she was made to be a police officer, and joining police was her sole ambition throughout her high school years. She got her learner’s licence as soon as she was old enough, and her restricted as quickly as possible after that. From year 11 she was the sober driver for her mates, and she never got a ticket even though she was pulled over a lot – that’s Great South Road for you after ten pm any day of the week. Her car was always legal, and her passengers were buckled in.
Ebony worked in retail for a couple of years while she improved her run time and mastered her press-ups. She’d never been naturally sporty so the physical training was a struggle, but the only time she wondered whether she would make it was when she was sitting at a computer in front of the strange tests they called psychometrics. She didn’t know what she was looking for when she had to match shapes or see patterns in a bunch of domino tiles. She was surprised to find she’d passed, and she finally made it to police college two months shy of her nineteenth birthday.
Ebony’s graduation created huge excitement in her family. Eighteen of her aunties, uncles and cousins drove down to Wellington in hired vans, crowded into the arena in Porirua to cheer and holler throughout the ceremony, and afterwards they piled her shoulders high with lolly leis, posing for beaming photos. She was posted to Counties Manukau, and after a few weeks of field training she was put onto a section run by a large Tongan ex-rugby player named Ofa.
Sergeant Ofa seemed to meet someone she knew on the street every day, and every second person was related to her somehow. “Oh, she’s my cuz,” she would often remark after a routine traffic stop, or while reviewing some CCTV of a shoplifting. The way she stayed calm under chaos helped settle Ebony’s new-girl nerves, and while the three guys on her section sometimes seemed too casual, Ofa made swift decisions when things got dicey, and she wouldn’t take excuses from anyone, in uniform or not in uniform. She was the most popular sergeant in the station.
About seven weeks in, at the start of a day shift Sergeant Ofa started line-up with a briefing for a young man they were going to pick up that morning. Fizz Braxton had failed to appear in court two weeks ago, with the consequence that a warrant for his arrest had been issued. The trouble was, every time officers visited his home his father let police in to the house without comment but Fizz was never found inside.
Ofa seldom wasted words on chit chat and Ebony appreciated that her sergeant always told her exactly what she wanted. “Right, everyone knows Fizz?” Ofa looked around her circle of four constables, making sure everyone had their eyes on her. “21-year-old, on actives for theft, unlawfully in enclosed yard, unlawful takes etcetera. Bit of family harm but no flags for violence.” Ebony typed Braxton/Fizz into her police phone, and entered the age: 21, trying to find the profile of the offender, but got no results. Simeon was sitting beside her peeling an orange into a rubbish bin tucked between his knees, and saw what she was trying to do. “Faisal, Ebs; his first name’s Faisal.” Ebony held her breath and entered the correct name, and straight away she got the picture she needed: a distinctive face with the young man’s pale green eyes a dramatic contrast against his olive complexion. Jeeze you’re an idiot Ebony, she said to herself. Of course he’s not in the system as Fizz. She made sure her embarrassment didn’t reach her face, and if Simeon wanted to make a smart remark he restrained himself in front of Ofa.
Ofa ignored them both. “He stays at his dad’s, second house down the right of way off Eden Street, and every time we roll down there he’s off out the back. So today: Ebony, Simeon, Ihi, you three are going to walk through the alleyway off Burton Cres to where it comes out at the end of that right of way. Ebony, I want you on black. Ihi take green, Simeon, you’re on red. Tank, you and me will go to the front door like normal. I guarantee our boy will try and get out of the house but you three will jump on him, copy?” Ebony digested the part she had to play. Black meant she had to put herself at the back of the property, and if Fizz came out the back it would be her job to arrest him. She kept her face impassive, but her mind was running through how she would do that by herself, and whether she should yell for help straight away or just go hands on, or maybe start casual first and see if he would follow her instructions. There wasn’t a lot of time for over thinking it; she had to get in a car with Simeon and Ihi and head to Burton Crescent.
Quietly but quickly the three officers made their way down the pedestrian walkway to the top of the long right of way that would get them to the back and sides of the Braxton house. As they approached, Ihi and Simeon fanned out into their positions and Ebony saw that there were no doors on the back of the house, a basic 2000s state house rectangle. Ebony let her breath out slowly; no doors meant the only thing she had to watch were windows.
Ofa and Tank had their patrol car barely visible the end of the right of way down at Eden Street, and as soon as Ebony and the boys were in position, Ofa drove the car up to the house. Without wasting any time they were out of the car and knocking on the front door, out of Ebony’s view. She heard some thumping going on inside the house and briefly heard voices, then suddenly a window was flung open over Ebony’s head, and Fizz’s face appeared at the window, looking urgently around the back yard. The green of his eyes from his photo told her she was looking at the target. Ebony stepped toward the window, looking up at Fizz with her spray gripped in her left hand. She kept her hands down but spoke firmly, “Go to the front door”. Fizz didn’t reply, just let out a disgusted ugh sound and disappeared from view, the curtain dropping back over the glass.
Ebony gazed at the window for a long minute, wondering what she should do now. She wanted to let the others know she’d seen Fizz, but she’d have to remember her call sign, then the sergeant’s call sign, and her mind had gone blank. Then what should she say? Guys, he’s inside! No, that would sound stupid. Of course he’s inside. She rehearsed in her head what a brief but clear radio transmission would be, and was about to press the talk button on her porty when there was a shout from the side of the house, and at the edge of her vision she saw Fizz Braxton dashing up the right of way towards the pedestrian walkway. Ihi appeared behind him, sprinting furiously. Instead of carrying on down the walkway Fizz suddenly turned and scrambled over a tall fence into a neighbouring property and Ebony watched as Ihi heaved himself up after Fizz. Ihi’s vest made for a more difficult climb, and Fizz disappeared from view while Ihi beached himself on the top of the fence, trying to swivel himself around so he could land feet first.
Ebony thought desperately about what she should do next. Was there any point joining the chase after those two? Perhaps she should go back to the car and have it ready on Burton in case Fizz popped out of a driveway up there. While she was still lost in indecision, Ofa and Tank raced around from the front of the house and dashed down to the right of way towards Eden Street, clearly preferring to go around rather than over the fence. As they reached the end of the right of way together, Tank put out an arm and grasped a tall post that stood at the end of the fence, intending to use it as a pivot to swing himself around, using the momentum from his sprint.
Unfortunately the timber post couldn’t take the weight of Tank’s sizeable bulk and it broke away, causing Tank to fall heavily towards Ofa, the post still in his hand. A lesser woman would have been flattened, but Ofa had clearly taken much harder tackles in her career as she merely shoved him aside. He fell heavily to the ground while Ofa stepped around him and ran down the driveway of the neighbour’s property, swearing softly.
Ebony reached Tank as he climbed back to his feet, unharmed. He gave her the patrol car fob and told her to get the car back from outside the house, but he then stood where he was, with his back to the fence. Ebony reached the patrol car and was reversing it back down onto Eden Street just as comms called over the radio: “welfare check two whiskey.” Welfare checks have to be answered or the balloon goes up, so Ebony thought again about what she should say in reply. It’s a cluster, comms… no, can’t say that. While she was still rehearsing something sensible in her head she heard Ofa’s reply on the radio, “All good comms, one in custody.”
What custody? Ebony thought, and looked around the street in confusion. Sure enough, walking back out of the neighbour’s place towards Eden Street was Fizz Braxton, his hands cuffed behind his back with Ihi holding one arm and Simeon the other, and Ofa walking behind them. Tank had to move away from the fence eventually and it was easy to see why he had sheltered in place: his blue uniform pants were split up the back from the crotch to the belt, his red undies showing through the gaping fabric.
Ebony gave her car keys to Tank for him to retrieve the car on Burton Crescent for himself and Ofa, while she drove the patrol car back to the station, the prisoner sitting in the back with Ihi, and Simeon in the front passenger’s seat. Fizz had a minor graze to one elbow but was remarkably unfazed about the whole thing. “You fullas been like nine times but you dumbarses never look in the dog kennel,” he announced. Good to know, Ebony thought. Note to self, check the dog kennel. “RTB with one, comms,” she radioed, and minutes later pulled carefully into the station. Ofa sent a group text: “Debrief in the muster room, 0800.”
“How did we let a squirter out of that address?” Ofa demanded, her eyes focussing on each officer in turn. “Nothing should have been able to get out of that house. Their cat should have been able to get out of that house.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Ihi. “Ihimaera, you were on green, what happened?”
“I heard you talking to him so I came to back you up inside,” Ihi protested.
“What was your brief?” Ofa asked him.
“I was meant to cover the green sector,” he mumbled, dropping his gaze. The sergeant said nothing for 30 seconds, letting everyone marinate in the moment.
“Tank, you ripped down a fence,” she continued, mercilessly, “and those better not be someone else’s pants you’ve changed into. I am sick of getting emails about the men’s locker room.” Tank knew better than to reply.
“Simeon, you sprayed a dog that was doing its own thing in its own back yard, when it came to sniff you. Bit of a woof was all. We had to tell its owner, get it hosed down. What was that about?”
“What sort of dog was it, Sim?” Ihi interrupted, happy to have the focus on someone else.
“It was a pit bull, rottie sorta kinda thing.”
“It was a spaniel you egg,” said Ofa, unimpressed. “Right. Patrol time you lot; get on the road and tip out some cars. Cell phones, seat belts, speed. Take out as many of our cars as you can; make yourselves visible.”
Three hours later Ebony was sitting in a patrol car by herself across from a liquor shop on Broadway, waiting for the driver of a car to return to his idling vehicle. Even in the few short weeks she’d been doing traffic she had learned that there was a good chance of a positive breath test from a driver buying alcohol before lunchtime. While she was still in her stationary car, a cyclist passed her on the other side of the road and gave her a cheeky grin as he went by. She turned her head and watched him, struggling to believe what she was seeing. It was green-eyed Faisal Braxton, on a push bike in broad daylight. Ebony grabbed her phone and called Ofa.
Her sergeant’s calm response completely deflated her. “Ebs, he’s been to court already. They cleared his warrant and gave him a new court date. He’s got a curfew, but he’s allowed to ride his bike down Broadway in the day time. Do him for no bike helmet if you want, but you can’t arrest him.”
That night, Ebony lay on the couch in an embrace with her mother. “I just can’t believe all that drama, Mum, for nothing. A dog got sprayed, a fence got pulled over, a uniform got ripped, five of us were running around jumping fences, just for one idiot to appear in court and be out again by lunchtime.” She hunched her shoulders miserably. “Do I belong in police, Mum? I’m a good cop; I know this is who I’m meant to be, but I just don’t know if I fit the system. I don’t think I will ever get used to it. It’s so messed up.” Ebony sniffed and wiped her eyes with the backs of both hands. Her mother stroked her hair.
“You’re all good, Bub. You belong here with us. Whatever happens out there, you’re still you.” She rubbed Ebony’s back gently. “You don’t have to be someone else, just be you. That’s enough.”