Ankles by Rory Jones

Attention? You mean erotic devotion?

The mollusc descends – the harbinger of

good weather and venereal opportunity.

As you get older, you realise you have less and less.

Fewer and fewer.

The bird flies in circles, each lap becoming

smaller in distance. ATC reports the flight patterns including

concentric dreams of lichen-clad romance,

of sunburn, of eventually being able to stand

tall in a set of shoes you are proud of.

Kick them off.

Six-foot in socked-feet, though the big toe

pokes unsheathed through the material.

Naked, nail-less due to a running incident.

The nail bed chemically bombed. Now,

nothing grows there. Like Aleppo.

The bird loops. The mollusc crawls. The

mollusc dies. The mollusc whispers. I am

banging my head against the wall.

Purple light in the canyon - that’s where I long

to be.

Tall dead pine trees stand very close together.

You smell of pine and between your legs

smells of pine. The you in my dreams that I hold

in my head is not the you now.

That’s because you have changed:

with knocks to the mouth, you’ve fallen to your knees,

searching for your teeth in the infant snow.

Do you hear the footsteps in the next room?

The ankles on which I stand, ache.

The mollusc reconciles.

If everyone could be everyone for forty

seconds I think we’d suddenly all get it.

___________

Rory Jones is a writer from Croydon, South London