SMALL TALK, MY ANIMAL

Quiet, now. The feeling fills my belly like a bowl of warm beads
humming. A buzz in the hot cup of my pelvis.

I press myself to the mattress, still. Safe and thrilling. Another muscle
murmur, a wriggle from my stomach to lower.

I bury my limbs and the soft spaces give. In the fold,
I am curled strong as a snail, as hidden as a fawn in a thicket.

The sun has slipped into the room, my eyelids. Like coal,
a dusty comet, I glow with secret cosmic crackle.

Here is my house, under scribbled skies and spiked stars.
Silhouettes swim in its windows, yolks slither yellow, and the knives
in the drawer lie together, silver and sleek as fish.

At night, I open my window and whisper back.

The paper of each scab curls up with a bite, and the world is risen
and smooth beneath. New things are born pink.

I pick at the ripping bits, peel at edging skin, pull at seedling hairs. I find myself in the tear
of tiny fibres. Up into the light, I sear where I push against myself.
Unfurling unsmooth, I am a seed, a tiger, a castle – rising.

Outside, the little ones push out in the morning, raising their soft pink faces.
The daisies pop themselves open, and I dig in the cakey soil, the ladders
of moss, to find ribbon and seed pod and coin, the switchblades tucked under wasps and bees.

At a shadow-rustle in the leaves, I crouch and turn,
creep the borders, electric under my own predator. My hungry creation.

A white picket fence is a ribcage to rattle. I run riot, I beat like a heart,
I pound – lunge and leap – never beyond the garden gate.

Text by Fiona Glen

Small talk, my animal

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Goes