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Maddy O'Dwyer
New Zealand

Four Steps To Standing on a Horse - Penny Howard - 2014
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Maddy O’Dwyer is nineteen and living on Auckland's North Shore. She works in dentistry by day, but moonlights as a writer and visual artist. She is a keen observer of people, with a penchant for stepping into other people's shoes and taking a walk.


May God's Love Be With You


Do you remember that day
we spent listening to sentient spiders
breathing in the walls, and under a
fraying twilight we saw
the grass yawn and swell against the dew,
and the passive-aggressive raven
craned his neck to swallow the sun,
and the roseate skies bled away
and how the Gods loved being with you, always.

Do you remember you said,
"dying is the most fun you can have,"
And we spent the night passing
time through the eye of a needle,
and the fireworks burst amid
a flush of clouds, and the veins
of our atmosphere were swollen with colour,
and do you remember I said,
“May God’s love be with you, always.”

And how do you go these days?
Do you still bleed when it rains,
does the white of your eye bruise as if
a petal against the wind?
And can you still spend hours
listening to a breath hollow all the meaning
in this world into elements and organs?
Tell me, do you still believe in the Gods sometimes?
Do you still visit the Gods these days?
You know how they loved being with you,
always.





Scattered


Today was a heavy day.
It began with sockets of storms
on the hunt, scouring skies, the early hours
reeked of lightning
and thunder was sprawled over
at the brim of sunrise
crying out for you.

A becoming
sky has finally bloomed,
a dozen blue roses rupture through
the cloud. You’re scattered now,
a pilot in death, prickles of wind
bracing you over wave break
and rock. You will not return
to the earth but the sea.
You were always meant
for something bigger
than me.

The atmosphere calls in
a sinking crimson, and I
watch as you take your final leave,
the horizon feverous and writhing
with grief.