These fragments I have shored against my ruins

It's the fifth week of the last term of our school year in New Zealand. We are in the slow climb to summer and every step drags.

The older students are on study leave or in exam rooms. The younger students are louder to make up for it, expanding into all the spaces around the school forbidden to them until now, staking out the best spots for next year.

I am writing an end of year report for my classes. Outside my office, there's a PE class in the pool. Someone's Spotify playlist provides a soundtrack. I don't pay much attention until Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" starts, and then they're all singing along, and it just about breaks my heart: "PLEASE! STAY!/I WANT you, I NEED you, OH GOD/DON'T! TAKE!/The BEAUtiful things that I've GOT."

Addressing that desperate want towards a person feels manipulative and selfish, but for a moment I get it; I know what it is to be both happy and afraid. All the beautiful things feel unbearably precious right now, as if they stand on unsteady pedestals, encased in cases of thin golden wire.

There are three copies of The Changeover in my bookshelf: two modern copies to be lent out when required, and the first copy I ever read, signed by Margaret Mahy in 2008, wishing me Happy Reading, Karen. It's nearly time to re-read it again; that, and Hicksville, and Pamela Dean's Tam Lin.

I visited my family last weekend. My niece and nephew sold flowers from their mother's garden, bouquets for $10 a pop at their streetside stand. We sang happy birthday to Mum. Rā whānau ki a Mary, rā whānau kia koe. I flew home into a sunset glowing pink and orange above the clouds.

On my noticeboard, pinned next to my calendar of vintage Vogue covers, is Tara Skurtu's "Morning Love Poem". Beside it is a postcard Mum gave me last Christmas, with a cartoon of a woman looking fondly at a potato. "If a potato can become vodka," the words above her read, "you can be anything you want to be".

A few years ago my brother asked how my Friday night had gone. "Good!" I said. "I got drunk and read poetry." He paused. "You and I are very different people," he said at last.

Last Tuesday, I went to the Christchurch Town Hall and an energetic Australian woman taught 2000 people to sing Lionel Richie's "All Night Long" in rough three part harmony. It was Guy Fawkes' Night, and on the way home I could hear fireworks and sirens. I listened to RNZ Concert radio; they were playing music for pets.

I saw a kingfisher on Saturday, sitting on a branch as our car flashed by. Days later, I cannot get over that metallic blue-green.

I am making a new dress. I am planning a new series. I am reading the works of Daphne du Maurier for the first time.

There are poppies in my garden. The bees are in the lavender.

Please stay.

That Healey Girl is the newsletter of Karen (or Kate) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river.