Topher Shields

壹 Rain arrives first. By the time you cross the courtyard the stone is already wet. Leaves on stone. Water moving from tile to tile. The door: still closed. The door: still closed. 两 Two walls make a passage. At the far end— red, then gold— not the gate but the distance kept before the gate. Lanterns bowed slightly with rain. 三 The hutong before waking. A bowl struck once somewhere beyond the lane.

A theology built from prayers I swallowed— yet something moves in the corner of the room, as if the unsaid learned to stand. Kia hora te marino, may calm widen— not as ease, but as a forgotten name dragging itself up the spine, damp with the dark that kept it. The sea holds still— unnaturally still— a surface waiting for the next breath to choose its shape. Kia whakapapa pounamu te moana, may the moana shine like pounamu, its weight tipping the shore as memory presses through greenstone light— a pressure familiar to bone, not mind.