Summer

In ordinary New Zealand – it could be Otahuhu, Porirua, or St Kilda by the sea – on an ordinary New Zealand day, an ordinary 14-year-old girl at an ordinary school, with an ordinary family who love her to bits, becomes extraordinary

 

The kid with the round lips and a pack like a shell on his back says, hey girl what’s that stuff on your face? You got a disease or something, eh pizza face?

 

And the girls with their long legs and the diamond studs in their flat bellies look down and say, nah, we’re busy eh

And the summer disappears into cloud

And it rains

And the pain comes on such that she stays home

and she stays home

The room spins when she stands up, the sky circles and her stomach revolves

– round and around, till no food can find its way down

and she is cold and alone in the big house

wraps a blanket round her body, and another, as she grows thin … and dizzy

from the heights that are about standing up, and O she just can’t make it to school

maybe tomorrow

The remote control is in control

The videos are about love and heartache and in the end they are always happy

She takes the morning by the hand and leads it through the afternoon, where she

pecks like a sparrow at a plate of food she distrusts

She cannot possibly find a place to put it

Her days are love stories on a late-night screen.