Kelly eats the pastry not the mince and Accidentally Kelly Street

               is her song and we take acid and walk to the beach but on different sides

           of the street because it’s so funny what she’s thinking, it’s so, so funny

       Later we fall asleep in Nana’s conservatory and wake baking in glitter

                    I take my cousins to the gardens to feed the ducks and the brightness stays

 

   Kelly says you never spit you are a lady

       Kelly says let’s get away from her she’s boring

           Kelly says we’re hitching, it was so fun hitching, she laughs

    I was terrified tho and then there’s more laughing followed by cackling

                   And I insist NO, you were there until she remembers being the trouble horse

 

Kelly puts on Get Free by Major Lazer, Kelly is child free tonight and we split tall cans

       of bourbon, I show her the little whare I am making for my dead grandfather

   I explain my dolphin religion to her, she is dancing to Get Free by her fourth can

          because reincarnation is boring

I watch the music video over and over after she leaves

                                                       especially the man stroking his bantam

        the girls twisting into the road like screws

               & especially the boys

                   making the blue knocking motion of bells in their dance

I tell Kelly the Zumba videos she posts on Facebook make me happy to be alive

          but she doesn’t believe me

 

               You can trace the world by the pattern of the snake’s skin can’t you?

    Diamonds are just straight lines afraid of their kinks

                    or the time I pulled Kelly’s hair and punched her when I shouldn’t have

and much wiser blood, hers, keeping its heat and saying it’s okay

          beside me in the gutter, and it is now, 22 years later because I’m laughing

and asking her if anyone knows she’s Māori in Gisborne,    if they can tell

          I mean maybe they can tell just by the way we dance