A Story About The Sadness

That time in 2020, during a Mirimiri session (traditional Maori healing massage) when the practitioner found my sadness.

“Aue, so much sadness,” she said

Pressing into my back
Holding me down

She needs help
She asks the man to come over -- 

“Is that ok?”

I said yes

But what I wanted to say was

No, just leave it there

Leave it alone

It’s old and stale

Sucked into every cell

Written on my bones

It pulls my shoulders down

Hearty as

Keeps me close to the earth
I might fall over otherwise

And I’m not sure how to live without it

Will I still be me when it’s gone?

I didn’t say any of that out loud but I think she heard me anyway
Her eyes said - "Get real, it’s gonna take more than one rub down to move that along”

The thing about sadness is when it’s that old you don’t even know it’s there anymore

It’s invisible

Cloaked by the things that pass through it

The music it writes

The songs it sings

The paint splattered over canvas 

The road rage and the violence

The words I speak

That's what we see 

While the sadness slips

Between the curve of light and dark

It has no name

It makes no sound

And it passes through us

In the wombs we share

Grafitti on Uterine walls

Etching it's initials into DNA

It waits for its mourning

That never came

And it runs the show

Melancholy chords tied to our tupuna

And they cry, as they have no choice but to cling to the sadness alongside us

Because we won’t let it pass

And do you think they wanna be here?

Hell no, who wants to die and then realise oh shit, we’re still in this mess

It’s old

It’s stale

And you will have to grieve


And all this came to mind as I was driving through the Hungry Jack’s drive-through and put the ‘Once A Panther’ podcast on, it’s the Polynesian Panthers, and the first episode - ‘Identity’ it’s called - they start telling their stories and I start crying and the girl at Hungry Jack’s is asking me if I want my receipt

I want to stop listening to the podcast right there and then

Because I can feel it

Old and stale in my bones

All the things left unmourned

I see my Poppy with a Lion Red

Enjoying the end of his life

I wonder if he enjoyed the rest of it

Or if he’s ok now

My Nana, 13 kids

The tea lady now

Laying out Malt biscuits for Palagi folk

Who didn’t even see her

Walking home, crying

My Mum, crying that she couldn’t do more

And me now, crying in a Daewoo

In the fucking drive-thru of all places

No one wanted us to be crying the same tears

Dying of the same cancers

Drinking the same beers

The ones that wash it all away

For a day or so

So you will have to grieve\

Before the sadness takes up all the space where love was meant to go, and everything that should have been for you, and every soul that waits to rest, stays tethered to the rotting corpses of all the things that go left unmourned

That’s the part they don’t tell you
That we only ever came here to let it all go