She Spends Two Years Vinny Glynn-Steed

She Spends Two Years

not looking westward, where the donkey’s melancholy lingers like tears collected under pillows or blighted thoughts uncovered in the corners of her cupboards. Nor past a seaside gable’s point-of-no-return, to landmines of deflated footballs hidden in the sand and in long grass where the clothes-line flails dejected off its metal captor the ricochet of wire are warning bells at night. Nor does she look eastward to flow and ebb of hills that slant away from angry eyes – we have no part in this they seem to say. She spends two years not listening to a summer snipe – tail end of its sinking fits and quavers, nor the conch-like wind that rushes down dunes in pockets to greet an empty strand. She spends two years not facing the unmanned watchtower where light was scattered once like platitudes at a funeral. The lantern long since faded in her eyes.

Vinny Glynn-Steed