On this day in 2013, the Marriage Amendment Act passed in Aotearoa. The bill meant that anyone could marry, regardless of sexuality or gender.
Pippi Jean
One Day
today I saw two women together
for real, realer than the
paper flowers on my head
one wore blue,
the other a blush,
and both their son by the hand
he strayed a little far
out to steal Aotea Square’s heart
so they started after him after
a kiss,
short and sure as the tying of
a shoelace, which says,
stay. Don’t come loose.
and hell if the warring weights of
who I want to be would only
tie together like that,
unbreakable in the April city chill,
I’d be – I’d just, unapologetically, be.
the six of us sit
in our paper flower crowns
and stare,
oh how we wish we could wear
ourselves so well.
Pippi Jean is a writer living and studying in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She really likes all her friends and taking long walks on the beach so could probably exist quite happily as a small dog. Her writing has been published in Starling, Mayhem, Landfall, Milly Magazine, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, and Overcommunicate Issue 2 and 7.