Odd bod

I’m watching myself watching a scene.
I’m a camera in a kitchen.
A shadow peeks past the kero heater 
into a dining room with its wedding furniture—
blocky mid-century oak. My father 
has the five-year-old eat stew 
and she vomits and he has her
eat the vomit. As a camera 
I have no emotion. 

I’m looking for answers
to years of gut issues. No one alive 
will tell me if this is real. For sure though,
the banana episode was real 
for a same but younger self—
Aunt Cynthia telling the story when I said, 
I don’t know why I retch 
when I see a peeled banana. 

Not seeing a cousin in a while
I tell him I’ve had a partner now 
for five years (was single for decades)
and my cousin asks, Why did no one tell me?
and I say, We’re not that kind of family.

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J E Blaikie lives and writes in Wellington. Steele Roberts published some of her poems as Tongue Burglar after she graduated from the IIML at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.