Two poems by Amy Marguerite

a person, a home, a chest

Two poems By Amy Marguerite

I am writing on a plane that is taking me to a home and looking out of a window

from inside of a window to the black of a sky. I am looking for what a home is and

whether I can know mine from such a height and darkness as this. The pressure is a

lot in my chest and I am sure it is not just the altitude because being in the black of

a sky doesn’t just put a pressure inside of you — it has to be in there, somewhere,

first. If this pressure is a person and a person is with you even when you are not

with them, they must be a home. I do not remember my three houses in the black

of a sky. A person said mi casa es tu casa before I left their house and now they

are in my house and I have never felt so at home and so fragile about a home I can

feel in a chest. I am worried about where this plane is taking me and this pressure

in my chest. I wonder if they are worrying too, about a person, a home, a chest.

reuptake inhibitor

this Sunday is full to the brim with sadness

everything that should be lovely: clouds,

my little sister’s smile, presses deep

on a pressure point and keeps pressing until

an electric feeling arrives at the base

of my skull. from here, the lovely thing

(that I do not know to be lovely yet) ascends

to the pleasure centre of the brain, quick

enough to be realised but not experienced

(equal in magnitude to an unrequited love)

and for a small moment I think I get it —

why people choose loveliness over sorrow.

a small tear falls. but I do not get to choose.

every Sunday is a prayer I cannot send up because

I am too aware of the comedown. it seems

a cliff is only dangerous after you jump off of it

and I am so tired of jumping. somehow or another

my body is returned by the same ocean, the one that keeps

forgetting to part in the middle, always

projectile vomiting itself onto the same sand in one

big, unrefined heap. This is where I dwell,

among the currents bound to a predictable path.

at the end of the day, I just want to be lovely.

Amy Marguerite is an avid poet, diarist, and blogger based in Wellington. Her work has appeared in Salty Magazine, Salient, and the NZ Young Writers Festival.