FICKLE ARGUMENTS
*Inspired by Ilya Kaminsky “In a Time of Peace”
Daughter for seventeen or so years
I watched myself argue as if through a lens. I watched them
spit out words
ruthless, so they cut into my skin. When I tried to defend myself, my words sounded
worse. Hit him sourly.
It is a fickle argument.
We leave it without apologising.
Go to school,
on walks, to bed,
pick some purple petunias, and pink
larkspur.
Ours is a house in which the words of a girl spurred to argue spit into silence
after far too long.
I see it in his screwed face
the nakedness
of a guardian.
I watch myself. Watch
others watch him.
The words of a girl break into silence exactly like the words of a girl.
It is a fickle argument.
It slides past skin, our eyes
take a tinge, the way a mouth puckers eating something sour.
We must
continue cordially, trying hard not to offend,
brush it under the carpet
dusty, moth-bitten and all, head bowed; it is okay, crumbly and torn.
This is a fickle argument.
I cannot hear apologies,
cannot stop avoidance.
How lovely is the image
of us smiling on the screen.
How lovely is the image (forgive me) how lovely.
Charlotte McKenzie
Year 13
St Cuthbert’s College, Auckland
