I feel like it like a phantom limb

Strange, wide spanning greatness

Like a lovely, lofty promise

Lashed to my back, barely visibly and hardly secure

Not like theirs

Theirs; this unstoppable force

Banishing all around them with one sweep

Of black, fated wings

Unapologetic and glowing

Secure in the knowledge of their own creation…

My kind aren’t meant to last…

How could we ever?

Intention lost in a mad, self inflicted haze,

Defects and imperfections left splayed

Wide open for all to psychoanalyse

The marks of their soles, name branded, and wet with black paint

Yet to fade from between my shoulder blades

At some combination of hours

I should see one of my own

Bright, beautiful expectations

Sprouting from their backs

Grand and sweeping and regal

Yet faulty

They’re out there, like me

Out among the smoke and neon

Among the stained glass and crosses

Among the fluorescent lights and beds with rails

Among the porcelain and razor blades

Some fading, some fighting, and some getting by…

…

Ilisa Fonua is a 24-year-old video editor from Nuku’alofa, Tonga. She has previously studied film making at Fiji National University. While studying she developed a passion for writing poetry to add on to her already active interests in creative writing and visual arts.