index

1.

I did not intend to write this. At first, I meant only to keep a ledger of distances.

Each morning, at a fixed hour — punctuating a sentence that never ended — I took my bicycle out from the garage on Forbury Road, coasted down to the sea, and recorded three numbers: the tide height, the extent of the rock shelf, and the day’s growth of the coast. There was a line of paint on the rusted balustrade at St Clair, a mark left by some earlier watcher. I placed my finger there. It became a habit.

Before the extension began, our maps were content with disagreement. They tolerated their old mistakes with civility. Fiords were misspelled, towns moved a fraction of a degree. That was forgivable. But then the South Island began to bloom. And the North.

We called it many things at first: the Outgrowth, the Chalk-Tongue, the White Road. This was to delay any contract with reality.

…

Continues in a forthcoming collection (late 2025)