Every one had island fever. Slumped over desks half asleep half drunk, chemical energy rushing through veins, slowing footsteps. People drifted through their lives, hibernating as teenagers before life got real, half asleep from the toxic smoke drifting from the closed bathroom stalls.

Everyone wanted to leave. Most people did, but came drifting back decades later. Once it was in your blood the wild life of the long white cloud always brought people back.

But, when I knew I would disapear from the familiarness isolated from the rest of the world, colours started leaping at me tauntingly, reminding me I would never see them again. The teal sheen of the Tui’s feather, the rich scarlett of pohutakawa, the smooth chocolate of Scree’s eyes and the grey bitterness twisting Sylie’s face. That last summer I finaly lived again, I had to, it was my last chance. I remeber pulling myself back together, stitching the seams back right and soothing myself in experiences that became glowing golden memories. Salty turquoise sea breezes; fingers greasy from fish and chips, sticky from melted icecream. It got easier to start living again when Scree rewrapped me into our old routine of curling on her bed with horror movies playing; stifling our laughter while we read under the sheets, spinning through the rain and racing through the mall on a trolley stolen from countdown. It got harder when Sylie turned precios memories grey and went back to her old patterns. Somehow in a whirl of blue skies and laughter, April was banging at my door demanding to be let in. I’d started stuffing 15 years of my life into an old battered suitcase. It sat open for weeks half overflowing with memories, half choked with “essentials.” I remeber I never finished packing. I just zipped up the suitcase an hour before leaving after Hammy’s reminding.

✨Unfinished✨

I walked through old haunts with the small rocks pressing through my thin soles. The wind moved through me as if I were already nothing more than a memory she’d known. All at once when I was on the bus the air was water and my old coughing fits were groping out my throat. I remeber the eyes of two girls I knew from school stabbing holes through my threadbare jumper. Half walked, half fled, half fell down the steps of the bus till I was lying on the dewy grass. The stars twinkled serenely as a retched and choked, blood was somehow all over my hands from my nose and tears were mixing with the red.