your mark remains imprinted
unlike my earthen pigmentation
and the impermanence of clay
this whenua echoes in the sea—sky—light
and kanohi manifest in the kōhatu
~ innumerable totems, of you
are the leftovers on the beach all that awaits me
now that you are gone
between pebble-cast-sand and the tide
wave forms and spume couplets coat my stripped-back limbs
in gleaming quartz-like destruction
~ wrought, like tohorā bones from the deep
in shifting landscapes and underwater spaces
taniwha, fresh and salted, flex disembodied muscles
and I am wai—mate
ancient runes and DNA threads lie cloaked and frayed upon my shoulders
but those tohorā bones will rise again
~ agile, weightless and free
