Hero vegetable
I eat the potato while listening to the new Jon Ronson
about the butterfly effect that internet porn
has unleashed on the valley His jokes
make people warm to him
and I am warming
to the cancellation of my plans
as if turning to face the person
on the other side of the bed, in a film
about two best friends on the edges of their lives
A night out starts as bright pleasure
but becomes a torment as it goes on like saying no
On the floor I foam-roll the knots out of my legs
I make small crablike motions
as tiny flames inside my legs blow themselves out
Security light, scan my windows
like a wrist held on a pillow
I have a lot of washing to fold because I
wash all my things so regularly now
My micro-biome is all dented up
but I am staying
useful to myself in the spring
A new sweat marks a new season
and like new hair is a prickling that soon becomes bearable
I go faster in the spring
get lower to the ground in the spring
Upstairs feet sound thrown, like things into the recycling
knives dropped down the side of the oven
Everything happens as if from a height
New people moved in up there they have a lot of children
and a lot of work to do and
well it’s nothing but I realised today
I’ve stopped listening to bands
who over-rely on the string section
to do all the emotional work
it started feeling like a chore to process it
on top of everything else
for instance there is a man so rich he has an aquarium
with a full coral reef in it, and a personal diver
who comes once a week to tend it
How can we process that, in our grief?
Why does a man install a coral reef
when he won’t do the work of tending it?
When the earthquake shook us awake
we did the work of fearing it
We got out of bed and held on to the doorframe
not knowing that this didn’t accord with the latest recommendations
but with no time for pointing in a different direction
with time only for a surge of blood like a sash to wear
It went on and on so grimly
The floor pulsing like a large man’s neck
I thought specifically ‘I’m ready to die’
I did the work of thinking that thought
Even then it didn’t end which was surprising because in life you think
of the worst thing so that you can enjoy things not being so bad
Yours might be my last face
Nothing would ever end again
Ending was over
I don’t straighten the sheets anymore before I go to sleep
I wrap myself in a smell I can’t smell
but that I know is there because I can
feel its soft glue, undoing
and in the mornings I’m
fallen slightly to bits like a balsawood airplane
and if there’s been an earthquake I don’t even know about it
Ashleigh Young
Ashleigh Young writes essays and poems and works as an editor at Victoria University Press in Wellington. She is the author of Magnificent Moon (poems, VUP 2012) and Can You Tolerate This? (essays, VUP 2016). She blogs at eyelashroaming.com.