The new lives of my children

Gently agitating the fleshy island of my kneecap, I wonder at the new lives of my children. I remember the day we gave them to the hill, wrapping them in earth like gifts. The mist came and carried them away and I heard the god of silence bury the last sublime notes of music. In the first dream, my children were undefinable from the plain of disquiet. After seeing them shake themselves out of the sea floor it occurred to me they were waiting there to ambush their prey. I spoke. Their unmoving mouths sat curved and rigid. Only their eyes were a-ripple, smooth grey clay and cartilaginous. I don’t know, I said, I will learn your language and come back. So I set about getting a grasp of their incredible system of gaze-respiration, their expressive eye-mouths, which I know now are properly called spiracles. When I finally made my way back to the deep ocean as before my children surfaced. I went forward. They hesitated and swung back into the barren muteness. Still I waited. Eventually they returned to touch my face. Each spoke their name and took a breath.

Rachel O’Neill

Rachel O’Neill is a filmmaker, writer and artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. The author of One Human in Height (Hue & Cry Press, 2013) and Requiem for a Fruit (Tender Press, 2021), Rachel is the 2023 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writing Fellow. For more, visit their website.