We are in a glass dome of summer – pick us up and shake us,
and pollen-dust will swirl around us. The delirious strip of sea
is the other side of our zip: we curve and arc into each other.
Life is reduced to blue and green, with dots of pink and yellow,
and all I could ever need for fullness again is this sea and sky,
these hills of foxglove and gorse, and long Galician granaries,
their stone frames warming lizards and cats. We stop, to sprawl
among the brittle mauve patches of seaweed, watch dolphins
spinning like cogs, in and out, in and out of the wave machine.
Hey, I see a whale – well, I see spray – but no-one believes me.
We find the corpse of a small creature – a porpoise, maybe,
all beak and curve, now brittle with sand. Across the meadows
are chubby brown goats, and foals gulping from patient mothers
whose fringes tumble like kelp. It all keeps circling in on itself.
Elizabeth Gibson is a Manchester writer and performer, and the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Her work is often inspired by her travels, as well as themes of queerness, community, body image, and mental health. She has recently been published in Aurelia Magazine, Giving Room Mag, Lighthouse, Popshot, Queerlings, and York Literary Review. She is @Grizonne on Twitter and Instagram, and she blogs at https://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com.
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