There is nothing more embarrassing than wanting something

Nothing. Nothing sears you with shame like longing, like desire—you are up on the world stage of desperation, you are a red-faced child reaching through a school fence for a toffee, you are a dog on a treadmill running itself to death for a bone. You are a greyhound in a dogfight whose last sight is the face of its owner, whose last thought is relief for having won for him, for your owner, to have wanted to win and won and be freed from shame. You are stepping into the black lacuna of yourself, the eclipse, and stepping out again covered in a thin film of oil. You are pissing yourself in the middle of the Meridian Mall and the vendor selling candyfloss is packing up and moving away. God, god, god! Muzzle yourself, mute yourself, erase yourself—seize the loose thread of yourself and pull yourself out of history, leaving it loose and baggy but freed from you. Please, please, please! You are the clown with flaking makeup in a circus on the farthest border of Novosibirsk and no one is laughing along, you are a last-minute addition to the Antarctic expedition and you didn’t pack the right clothes and you get yourself lost in a blizzard and the other explorers have to waste time coming to find you. The Antarctic tundra is pure and white. Unsullied. Soon the snow will cover you. Please please please let them not find me. Let me be made clean.

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Molly Crighton is a writer living in Ōtepoti Dunedin. She recently completed an MIS at Te Herenga Waka, and works as a collections assistant at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. Her work can be found in journals across New Zealand and internationally.