She kneads herself into the grass,
brooches of hay collecting on her back.
I’m on my stomach, the grass glossed
and sun-pooled, and for once
I’m not waiting for something or someone
to slip from surface talk to the big stuff
as readily as a mother forgives –
I’m watching her beard fill with buttercups
and the wet beads on her tongue nudge back
and forth as she shimmies against me.
I reach for a stick, throw it, and off she trots,
her paws a skit as she loses track
of its flight. She returns with an open
tennis ball in her mouth, a clopping ring box
she presents with a flourish. I readily accept,
placing it on my stomach like an upturned
book, and then I’m looking at the sky – a hearty
magenta block, and the remainder of my evening
appears in hob flames and final Tupperware clicks.
She leads me home, my hessian stopwatch,
urging me to live, live, live.
I swallow as the script starts up.
Born and raised in Manchester, UK, Rhianne has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at The University of Manchester. She has loved words (and arranging them) since she could put fluffy pen to paper (that’s a lot of fluff, and a lot of paper!). She explores human relationships in all of their wonderful complexity in her work and writes a lot about mental health, a subject close to her heart. You can find more of her poetry and general musings over at rhianne-writes.tumblr.com.
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