The Collar Holds
Topher Shields
__________
In the kitchen
above the K’ Road dairy,
I sew the small flag
to your denim jacket
with thread I’ve pulled
from my own cuff,
three stitches through
the frayed collar,
the needle flashing once
under the bulb
like a match
struck in a dark room.
Your shoulder carries
last night’s rain
and the cheap pomade
we split on rent weeks.
Outside,
buses drag their breath
down the hill
toward the harbour.
Inside, the radio
spits an old disco track,
tinny horns,
a bass line you answer
with one bare foot
keeping time against the lino.
I hold the cloth flat
while the thread sinks,
and think how easily
a thing can become
a way of staying:
the knot, the hem,
the small resistance
of fabric under strain.
June, on Karangahape,
a bottle broke
and left its bright violence in the street.
You still wear the thin scar
above your wrist,
a pale comma
I touch without speaking.
You do not pull away.
We have learned
the shape of silence
that does not mean distance.
You laugh when glitter from the table
clings to my forearm,
a scatter of cheap stars
that refuse the sink,
the bin.
I let them stay.
They catch the light
each time I reach for thread,
small refusals
that outlast a march.
Then you tilt your head
and I begin the braid,
your hair dividing
and gathering again
under my fingers,
red ribbon worked through it.
Gold, violet,
colours my mother
once burned in a metal bin
beside the washing line.
We never named that fire.
Some things survive
by not being spoken.
The braid tightens
Your breathing slows
to meet my hands.
Tomorrow the streets
will drum and swell
with whistles, drums, flags,
with strangers shining
openly into noon.
Tonight there is only this room,
this chair,
this jacket waiting by the door,
this scar,
this ribbon,
this laugh,
the radio fading into static,
and the simple fact of being kept.
When I lift the jacket from the chair,
the flag has settled into the seam
as if it had always belonged there.
You shrug it on.
The collar holds.
The room does not look away.
__________
Topher Shields is a poet from Aotearoa New Zealand. His work appears in Puerto del Sol, The Shore, Mantis, Santa Clara Review, and Cordite Poetry Review, among others. He was an Editor’s Choice Finalist for the 2025 River Heron Editors Prize and was shortlisted for the 2025 Bedford Competition Poetry Prize.
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Posted in Pride: June '26 and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry