Koru

In “Koru,” a mother reflects on her son’s decision to leave home and return to kura — Māori school — after a gap of two and a half years. The narrative shifts between past and present, mother and son, circling the orbit of their shared life. At the heart of the story is the titular koru, a spiral motif that signifies nature’s looping patterns of arrival and departure — of degeneration and regeneration — as the mother braces herself for her son to go away and hopes for his return.

Written by the Māori writer Nadine Anne Hura and first published in Te Whē,“Koru” is lush with Māori words that gather and swell as the narrative progresses. These words have an emotional impact regardless of a reader’s familiarity with the language, and they render the text rich with meaning.

— Raaza Jamshed for Guernica Global Spotlights

love our tikanga. I love the way there is space for us to come and go, to leave and return. So much is familiar about this journey. So much is strange. We are not the same people, he and I. My hands move in rhythms they know: stitching his name into his trousers, locating laundry bags to prevent lost socks, pulling the red suitcase out from under the bed. A different bed, a different house. On this day four years ago, I hadn’t slept at all. When the first light of day nudged