Travellers

Devon Webb

They were eager, serious travellers, absorbed in understanding what was to be seen and discovering what was hidden… this city and its secrets, these barely established inhabitants bearing a certain anonymity appointed only to those fresh to these streets like indeterminable, new-fallen leaves dancing in the fierce self-assurance of the biting Pōneke breeze. 

Soon, she thinks, soon they will know me. Soon I will capture it all in poetry – these rain-glazed bricks of Cuba, these crowds of colour, all these mysteries tucked behind café doors & balconies overlooking the wind-worn bodies of buildings and hills stretching up up up on either side like the city is held in the hand of some gentle creature… the way it opens to the Harbour where the city meets the sea… streetlights like a loop of shining pearls, the city a gift to be received with curiosity by a yearning girl, like me… 

These roads like ribbons crossing over each other. Like rivers running down to where the ghosts of other writers – those holy ancestors – speak in stone… if they are ingrained in the city why not me? If they can live forever how long till my name rings out over the water? Reflected in the very geography like the colours eating the night? How long till I can sink into this pocket of ocean and not drown? Till I can soar into the sky up there and never run out of breath?

This city: an infinity of possibility waiting for the wonder of a woman open and eager enough to take it. All those stories yet to be written. The tales this wind will send tumbling out of side streets and alleyways and down through the tangled hills. The traveller, her tongue already tasting the forbidden potential of a dream they tell you not to chase. The traveller, both already home and a world away.

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Devon Webb is a Gen Z writer & editor based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her award-winning work has been published in over seventy journals worldwide & revolves around themes of femininity, vulnerability, anti-capitalism & neurodivergence. She is an in-house writer for Erato Magazine, an editor for Prismatica Press, & is currently working on the launch of a collective called The Circus, which will prioritise radical inclusivity within the indie lit scene. She can be found on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok & Bluesky at @devonwebbnz.

Featured image supplied by circular publishing.