Stonewalling

In skeins of dust, I shadowed your
hands, like Sisyphus’ your body
tense, sinews taut. We hammered
and spliced, thrust and nudged
grit and pebbles into cracks, our
shoulder blades aching, hands raw.
I wanted to touch your tender skin,
your musculature, searching for you,
begrudging sun and moon, the arrival
of spring. In bed, we lay like effigies,
the wall naked between us, its stones
bearing down on our blunted tongues.
 
That summer, toad flax, angel-hair,
milkweed seeds blown from fields,
fell on barren stones, but the wall
spun a heart around itself, salvaged
moss-pulp, lichen skull caps, fledgling
feathers left in empty nests. The house
nearby shed its ghost bloom to drift
like the stars and the stones turned
blue with the moon’s erasure. Our
endeavours at an end, you left me
to fend for myself. I let the stacked
topping stones lie idle for years in
wild witch-grass, unforgiving as scars.
 

Sue Davies

3rd prize, Binstead Poetry Competition, 2020
and published in the competition anthology