Fiona Robyn
Living Things
I have carried living things in my hands all week, sneaked up on daddy-long-legs, pulled them off painted walls and held their brittle bodies.
I’ve picked up blue-black beetles like shiny stones, moved them from inside rooms to out, they stick to your thumb, they seem happy enough to cling on. Best of all the two young frogs who’d come onto the kitchen tiles to see what they could find.
I watched them bending their tiny legs with toothpick bones inside, felt their rubbery skin against mine as they pushed away, they were amazing.
I have held living things in my hands all week, knowing that if I wanted I could close the space between my fingers.
And I think how it might have been for those two frogs, to be lifted up that high, that fast, and when the light comes back they could be anywhere,
to be placed on gravel, to look around for something, to crawl towards it.
I’ve picked up blue-black beetles like shiny stones, moved them from inside rooms to out, they stick to your thumb, they seem happy enough to cling on. Best of all the two young frogs who’d come onto the kitchen tiles to see what they could find.
I watched them bending their tiny legs with toothpick bones inside, felt their rubbery skin against mine as they pushed away, they were amazing.
I have held living things in my hands all week, knowing that if I wanted I could close the space between my fingers.
And I think how it might have been for those two frogs, to be lifted up that high, that fast, and when the light comes back they could be anywhere,
to be placed on gravel, to look around for something, to crawl towards it.
Page(s) 52
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