The Optimist

He drives a zebra-drawn carriage. Says picnic is an ugly word, like snip snap or chitchat. She cuts a fashionable silhouette.

One foot across the threshold and someone speaks of taonga soon to be displayed, hoping for ‘a bit of Māori at the fringe of heaven’.

The door hangs still so long its hinges rust. No voices, just bird calls punctuating the vacant air: kaka’s morning whistle, kawau’s midnight cries.