Papatūānuku – The mother whose sacrifice meant everything
(Creative Writing)
Art / Tara Griz
Ko Ranginui e tū iho nei
Ko Papatūānuku e takoto nei
My world was one of darkness — of Te Pō. Its embrace belonged to the strong arms of my husband, cradling our children, comforting — I believed. Until I heard whispers which soon became cries. Our sons. They begged for freedom, for light–
So, I loosened my grip on my lover slightly — to let a sliver of sunlight seep through into our perpetual darkness. And I would watch the light enter the eyes of my children. Watch as freedom called their names in a voice that sounded like an old karakia. A voice that threatened to break mine and Ranginui’s steadfast embrace.
Yet I yearned to hear it speak. I heard it — my sons’ defiant plan for Tāne Māhuta to stretch his limbs between us, separating us forever. But they would be free. And so, when I felt my son’s body strain against mine, fighting for the unexplored between, to live, to breathe, to see the light again–
I did not hold on. I let go. And everything I had ever known was ripped from me
My Ranginui.
He screams in agony and reaches for me, his arm a hot blaze of lightning shaped in a jagged bolt of pain. My entire being shakes and splits and widens as I am pushed down -
Falling.
Eyes screwed tightly shut, the arms of my sons the only thing tethering me to reality.
And suddenly I am still. I think that I am dead. Surely, I cannot keep living like this.
Alone.
I have never known myself without the feeling of his arms around me. I do not want to open my eyes. I realise I do not know that I ever have. All I have ever seen is whispers of sunlight colouring the irises of my children.
My children. I open my eyes and there they are.
Tāne leaps and bounds across me where I lay, saplings flourishing upon each step. His hands intertwine with mine and I watch as he lays his roots under my skin, and trees rise from where we are one. He kisses my face gently with soft moss, my skin freckled with fallen leaves he sheds in his wake.
The leaves on Tāne's trees sigh and whistle as Tāwhirimātea races through the trees, howling in laughter as he chases after his brother. He does not run across my body as his brother does, simply swirling through the air, always quite out of reach. He blows a cold warning along the horizon — and goosebumps rise along my skin.
Hills rise and valleys dip where I feel the chill of Tāwhirimātea's call. The valleys are filled with the deep blue waters of Tangaroa, oceans that rise and fall with each of his breaths. Each wave that laps against me, he whispers to me his gratitude, his joy of being free at last.
And my Rūamoko, he sleeps still in my womb, deep underground where it is only him and I. Every so often, he wakes, he trembles, and shakes, spilling out his anger for how we were once entrapped, speaking in a spiralling pool of lava.
Our world is one of beauty — of doubtless chaos — and of balance. I am at peace.
Yet every so often, a single, cold tear rolls down my face. I breathe it in and inhale not salt, but sadness. It is not mine. I do not need to open my eyes to know where it came from.
Ranginui.
My husband — the sky father, he cries for me. He fills the vast space between us the only way he knows how. I go to weep, to hotu, to reach for him once again–
And then I stop. For I am Papatūānuku.
The spirals of my fingertips trace the life cycle of the quick fox. I flick my wrist and water cascades down the face of a rock. Foxes and fawns tumble in swathes of green, bathed warmly in the gazes of their mothers. The sweetness of a bird’s first cry, the grains of ice that kiss the tips of each mountain, the warmth found only in the hollow of a tree.
The are all my creations. Each one of my sons who helped me build this world — our world — was born unto me.
I do not need the sky for I have filled the earth with my love, it bleeds out of everything. It is everything. The tears of my lost lover only help me to grow. I no longer wish for the dark embrace of my husband.
I live off the air between us.