sunset, wakari, ōtepoti.

ella sage

i'm outside your family home and you are

over the ocean

         (as many people whose feet have kissed this corner of footpath are). 

you speak to me in the gently tossed sunset.

i am in her golden underbelly.

         we have to stop meeting like this.

burn against the salted skyline, 

open my knees on the coarse gravel between gutter and white lines, 

         pretend pain is real enough to feel from seven ninety two k's apart.

         my blood passes between your teeth,

twilight tincture.

behind me the concept of a suburb       burns

         and the evening stretches ever onwards.

i raise my hands to swing from the horizon

         take me with you.

shins slicked, smoke stacked, sirens slowly falling silent.

nothing (good) happens in this old, empty city. 

the streets flood. 

         we used to burn with desire.

i still get nightmares

of drowning on my way to school

after hillside road became a river.

the embers get so cold.

         green flash over mt cargill

         sun swallower sending smoke signals over the cook strait

         swing down the horizon till it's all ours.

ella sage (she/they) is a 20-year-old writer, editor and student currently living in ōtautahi. ella's work can be found in Canta, Create Happy Magazine, Gremlins Ōtautahi and bad apple, on her own substack inthiscorneroftheworld and in co-authored substack summer of love alongside bram casey. if you fail at finding her poetry online, look to the ocean - it's usually singing the same songs ella does.

while ella is currently serving as managing editor of Canta, the student magazine at UC, she couldn't deny a request to have a poem accompanying the least famous girl at the waffle house by her longtime collaborator/twin flame/soulmate bram casey. sunset, wākari, ōtepoti takes inspo from bram's poetry and the views from outside his family home on a balmy september evening.