they ask me if i still think of death, i say i always have a shadow, like shafts of rain falling in sunlight. i don’t need monsters and mythos to explain this, to explain you. i need an apple tree, and a fruit whose name has been lost to history. the rainbow ended on the island today and i thought about the impossibility of a pot of gold. we are too fragile for miracles and sacred trees and funerals, but we have them, all the same. i will always think about death, because the thought of it gave me courage when i toed the ledge on a crippling winter’s day, these are the things we crown ourselves with, a kind of reincarnation. you were a boy who toppled giants, and i am the final stone in that sling, flung forward in that fatal battle –and it’s still true you can love someone whose hands you’ve never held, whose name you’ve never spoken, and you can still have a shadow under the brightest sun.
*Honorable mention: 2023 Valiant Scribe Poetry Competition.
Sarah-Kate Simons is a poet and writer from New Zealand, where she lives with her adorable but troublesome Fox Terrier. She is widely published online, in magazines and in anthologies, such as Write On, Re-Draft, the NZ Poetry Society Anthologies, Poetry NZ Yearbook and Charles Olsen’s La rebeldÃa del sol. She has also placed in several poetry and writing competitions and was the Haiku Junior judge for the 2022 NZPS International competition. She has a great affinity for moss, the theatre, and quoting mythology out of context.