Up onto the roof and down again

Each summer, we commission nine of Aotearoa’s finest writers to tell us a short tale. This year’s theme is distraction. Here are the first three.

- BY JOHN PRINS

Her husband looks like a child up there on the roof. His outline is stark against the powdered sky and Leanne is reminded of those life-sized celebrity cardboard cutouts. Despite her efforts to reach him through the heavy air, to warn him of the thickening mizzle, he will not listen. He will not come down off the roof. There he goes, making his cautious progress across the roof's ridgeline, tiptoeing as though he was walking a tightrope, as though he was Philippe Petit. That he cannot see how pretentious, how self-absorbed he is being makes Leanne angry. Later, she will regret yelling up to her husband that he can fall and break his neck for all she cares.

Today is Labour Day and every year on Labour Day Leanne prepares the soil in her sunken garden. Spring arrived this year with a fever, flushed and sweating and delirious. The exertion of preparation in this humidity blurs her body at its limits. She is evaporating, made concentrate. It's only late morning and already she feels the air is so damp she is bathing in it, swimming down for handfuls of the seafloor. The steam lifting off the turned mulch smells of green tea and wet dog. Something grumbles in the distance. Though Leanne understands her work in the garden is regenerative, the audible pop of green shoots letting go makes her feel like a monster. She has removed her gloves in the heat and the sweet-smelling moisture from the plucked suckling plants has made her fingers sticky.