If She Could Bring Iona Marble Quarry to a Table – Published in 'Magazine 192'

If She Could Bring Iona Marble Quarry to a Table 

She would put willow flowers and her own rain-blurred smiles on the table. Arrange honeysuckle leaves between the metamorphic muscle of marble. She’d recall how her finger had fitted perfectly inside a drill-hole on the wetted rock, let the sensation pull in the scent of gunpowder. She’d layer the sea-skills, rock-skills, steam-skills of once-upon-a-time men, arrange the contents of their dreams and piece-boxes. Over the beeswax polish she’d fly a lone rock pigeon iridescent with sea light. Invite the wrecking ball of the south east wind to the table top to squall her sureness to smithereens. She’d spread those smithereens until there was space between for starlings to land. She’d let cold sand silk between her fingers and blow an eyelash and two nightmares into the table’s candled centre. Listening to her desires sizzle in the pink-footed flame, she’d unmoor a fleet of cormorant shadows to shelter all that was now scoured raw. She’d breathe dominions of mica until everything glittered.