sixteen minutes

By Zia Ravenscroft 

sixteen minutes into saturday

and my arm is unbroken.

my friends, somehow (mostly)

alive and intact, smoking on the edge of the porch,

drunk and arguing over the playlist queue:

i love every single one of them

i break the cherry between my teeth like a prayer.

spit the pits out, one, two, a reverse communion

i am giving my god back to the earth

what are you looking at, a voice breaks the night

which is really just a request for company,

so, gather.

talk of matariki and the three stars on orion’s belt

placing me up in that sky:

you could work at the planetarium

interrupted, a tiny green stalk is tossed through the air followed by

(far above us) a comet, or just the international space station

spiralling down over the horizon. like a miracle, like a promise.

salt thrown over the world’s shoulder, and we get up to dance

see? i could work. i could make this all work.

---

Zia Ravenscroft (he/they) is a queer and trans writer, actor, drag king, and student. He has been published in Starling, bad apple, The Spinoff, Overcom, and Takahē, and performed at the National Poetry Slam Finals in 2023.