HAECCEITY



This strange, unreal existence.
I have seen strangers
decline and die on social media
and not known if it was real.

I have learned that someone
I really knew has gone
and yet someone is still
curating their wall.

The Huia only exists under glass
in bell jars or museum cases.
When fashionable European ladies
saw those white-dipped black plumes
in the hair of the chiefs,
it was all over.

Sartorial enthusiasm silenced
the smoothed, unslurred cadences
asking: uia uia uia, where are you?

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