Laetitia Laubscher

Auckland, New Zealand

 

 

Originally born in South Africa, but currently based in New Zealand, Laetitia Laubscher is writer, photographer and poet who has created work for various organisations like the United Nations Development Programme, the Red Cross and Vice. She is also the founder of the Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, the world's first and only poetry exhibition held in Antarctica.

 

Poem completed 2nd May 2020

 

Deep Bone Longing

 

It feels like an experiment

For how long people can last without affection

 

The scientist studying the cosmos from the South Pole

Downloads Tinder and begins to swipe

 

Warm, distant bodies in the night

Can we really blame our skin’s loneliness?

 

I adored you in a kind of way

But chose fuel consumption over fossilisation anyway

 

It feels like an experiment

For how long people can last with affection

 

We sieve for the carbon of those who left us

While peering into the telescope in search of those who won’t

 

Hurtling a golden record into the remote

Hoping to be decoded and perhaps even learnt

 

It feels like an experiment

Do we even deserve affection?

 

Meanwhile, the uncontacted Acre tribe gazes back up at us

But we do not tell them about the sonnets or the genocides

 

Academics warn us not to fetishize first contact

Since it’s usually resource exploitation made under the guise of affection

 

Maybe someday I’ll tell you about the time I too was colonised

Sent me running back into the state of nature but I wanted to go further still –

 

There are some vacancies not even affection can fill

But there is a deep bone longing to bear the emptiness together

 

In the cold laboratory the dreamer

Cups a small flicker of light

 

Maybe I won’t leave again this time

If you promise you might