Haelyn King
But as the drawers and shelves emptied, the boxes became heavier to lift and harder to pack. The walls sagged like purple eyelids without their photos and artwork. The corners sulked in their darkness as cabinets and tables and desks were heaved out of them. But the windows seemed to let more light in, trying to trap her in the guilt of a bright, empty room; the curtains refused to wave goodbye even as the wind blew through them, hitting blank walls.
Hours grew long and sticky and hot, the sun refused to set, and the forks she half-heartedly threw in their box seemed to reappear back in the cutlery drawer time after time. She set down the cutlery box and shut the drawer; she wiped her hands over her face and huffed out a long breath; she grabbed her keys and got in the car and left. But not for the last time.
There has always been something about the bush that has calmed her. The familiar silver underbelly of ponga, the brown skirt of whekī, the tōtora litter; the way they blanket the winding hills of Waitākere. The damp undergrowth lingers in the wind whipping through her hair, whispering haere mai. The life of cicadas slips in through the open window. The dashed white lines on the cool, shadowed road guide her deeper into the heart of the forest.
She exhales into the wind; it is stolen and whisked away to frolic between leaves and blue sky, hopefully. This is nice. Getting away from the never-ending routine of packing every one of her belongings into plain cardboard boxes is exactly what she needs right now.
But still, the hurtling metal box and the bush are not enough to rid her mind of pick and wrap and pack and tape. How many days are there until she has to be out again? Not enough. Will that one big scrape behind the hallway door impact the bond? Has she vacuumed all of the glitter makeup out of the carpet? Has she accidentally forgotten that she left some really significant family heirloom under the deck, and now the grass she can’t reach with the lawnmower has engulfed it, never to be seen again?
Her fingers flex against the steering wheel before she turns onto the dusty road. Tall canopies and dark trunks embrace her, warm despite the coolness they provide; this entrance is carved into her brain through the precise chisels of memories.
She parks and grabs her tote from the passenger seat — not one she uses often, because she stupidly already packed her favourite away — locking the door before heading out onto the gravel track. She frowns.
She can’t believe she has to leave that house, the one whose six sides have homed her for so long. It all feels so unfair, the way it isn’t hers, and she has no say over it when she knows the exact length of the hallway in the dark. Her room is nothing but a long-decomposed body now, left only with a skeletal framework. Its soul is gone, chipped away piece by piece to pass on to another, as if it can be reincarnated time and time again without acknowledging who it was before.
And never again will she tuck herself in the frame of the back door, head resting against cool metal, staring at the blinking stars. Never again will she lie on her bedroom floor wearing headphones at full volume. Never again will she laugh in the kitchen, cry on the couch, sing in the shower. Soon, the house will be filled with someone else’s music instead of her Fleetwood Mac, someone else’s plants instead of her various pots, someone else’s blankets instead of her hand-knitted ones. She will never again get ready by wiping glitter eyeshadow onto her lids at the same time every morning with the sun peeking in at that very specific, very comforting angle.
That house has memories of her, she thinks resolutely; she has made sure of it with every carpet stain and wall scrape and thumbtack hole. But these are only echoes of one blip in time. Surely enough, new scrapes will cover hers, and the thumbtack holes will be filled in; the new residents might think they made that stain, weaving a backstory into the carpet threads and forgetting it was ever a lie.
And she has no control. The house is worth money she doesn’t have, so she must scoop herself from the place and leave the new tenants a fresh canvas to fill.
Her jaw clenches as she reaches the waterhole. It’s the injustice, the stress, the sadness of it all. Is a home built to be temporary like that? Must she leave the scaffolding around the next one? Must she take extra care not to mold a comfortable spot for herself? Must she leave the cutlery and the plates and all of her stuff in the boxes so it’s easier when she must move once again?
She unzips her shorts, dropping them on the sandy, shaded shore, lying on the long grass. Her shirt is peeled off and thrown atop a fallen tree trunk, discarded in favour of her only unpacked togs.
Turning towards the steep, rocky bank of dirt, she takes a high step up into a worn foothold, gripping a trunk whose bark sticks to her palm. A track is worn into the side of the bank, footholds dusty and flat, crumbling with memories. Each climb brings past versions of herself to mind, traversing this same path — with less struggle and longer limbs now, yes. The poataniwha rustles a kia ora in the light breeze.
She reaches the top of the high bank, standing tall with the patē and kawakawa, fingers grazing the pikopiko and rereti. She brushes her hands beneath the leaves, nails kissing the korus which mirror the pads of her own fingers.
A rope sways gently above the water, wrapped at its end around a thick branch high above her head. The rope is worn, with heavy knots tied near the bottom.
Forget bright, sun-faded plastic; this was her swing. And she can remember the feeling of the wind wrestling with her damp, matted hair, her toes clinging to the rough rope. It tastes like Countdown ham and cheese rolls, like $2 lolly bags, like sunblock.
The water is pounamu in the drunken afternoon sun, surface smooth and waiting to be split, spilling taonga, like games of mermaids and tales of taniwha and the sound of squeals bouncing off the banks. But that’s who she really was back then; it was true to her, when they wore the wet like a second skin, immune to the chill. It waits patiently to glance across her skin with a sharp coolness and know who she is again.
She wants to know who she is, where she belongs. Among the water and the trees and the shrubs, she is part of the ecosystem; her bare feet know the soil. If she hums, the tui will join in and dance between tree branches and broken sky, framed like a photo hanging on a wall. If she listens, the cicadas will buzz louder, and it will overpower the echoes of helicopters and trains and car horns in the back of her mind.
She thinks of her first boyfriend, who hadn’t been from the West, so hadn’t explored out here much. She had itched to pull back ferns and show him the secrets she knew. She had wanted him to feel cool water on his skin and understand her. It was all more intimate than saying I love you.
The bush whispers her name, building a soft, wet underbrush bed just for her. And it feels more like home than any four walls do. The thick greenery is more forgiving than paint and plaster. Far more constant, too. It stands strong despite its battery, yet old and proud, and she can see a wrinkled version of herself standing just the same.
But when the sun sinks to sleep, she will have to return to that half-empty place of floorboards and glass panes. The one which throws her words back at her and shrinks, so she struggles to push the couch out.
She scoots herself to the edge of the bank, wriggling her toes into the dirt as she stares down at the waterhole. She knows how to aim it perfectly, knows that over there are a few rocks you can’t see, so she has to jump farther to the left, and she has to get a good run-up coz the lip of the bank extends a little bit beneath the water.
So she retraces her steps and gets a good run-up, jumping out to the left and soaring into the open arms of the pounamu-water. In this underwater-womb, it is quiet and dark and thick. The coolness cuts, sharp as a mother’s stern words, stealing her breath even as she emerges with a shuddered gasp. But the breaths find themselves again falling out of a grin.
When the sun sinks to sleep, she will have to leave. But she won’t feel bad when she says goodbye, because she knows — and the bush knows — that she will be back.
She ties up the final loose ends of her existence in the house the next day. She folds up her duvet and sheets, takes a car-full of boxes and bags to the op-shop, and attacks the skirtings with a soapy rag.
She takes most of her stuff with her in those cardboard boxes, but she leaves some residue of herself behind. She leaves a few strands of hair and flakes of glitter embedded in the carpet fibres. She leaves marks on the wall that were not there when she arrived. She leaves holes in the white paint of the ceiling from thumbtacks. It’s her own little way of saying goodbye.
With one final caress of her hand against the wall and the lock of her key, she turns and leaves the house.
It weeps as she leaves, mumbling sorrowful farewells through cracks in the vents and tiny holes between the windows and their sills. It will be fine without her: the new tenants will fill the gap she leaves. And even if the house doesn’t remember her, it will always wonder about the origin of those scars, that one piece of glitter. And even if paint is layered over — or most of her dust is vacuumed up — she will know it was there.
Besides, she and the house both know where her home truly is, and where it will always be.
Haelyn King is a writer from West Auckland and was awarded second place in the Sargeson Prize Secondary Division in 2025. In her free time, she enjoys reading, making all kinds of art, and writing to explore her big emotions and ideas in a pretty way. Stories are her biggest love in life.