Marcia Hindson

orrery of a head

Love is sometimes a shoelace that can only 
be loosened by a strong pair of just-right teeth.  

And does it matter whether a lover has wrestled 
a whole squadron of ladybirds and won or not?

Sometimes a lonely clitoris wants to rename 
itself but then clever fingers shush it to sighs. 

There have been daughters that nursed whole libraries 
of books on the soft fells of their origami breasts. 

It only takes a summer's worth of leaf-sitting 
to become a black belt at karate-chopping slugs. 

The woods wear their memories inside the spirals
of fiddleheads and travelling meadow grass. 

And the Howl knows more about the art of silence 
than an entire glade of ghostly, cut-down monks. 

Whole worlds exist on the underbellies 
of plumped pillows as they fall off to sleep. 

Continents of possibilities can be journeyed 
between the wise vines of juvenile pumpkins. 

Every rosebush learns the mythology of thorns 
before they decide whether to grow them or not. 

There are patches of women that grow nettles 
in their stomach the way mountains inherit clouds. 

There are rumours that oceans of paprika can tide 
grown babies back to the shores of their mothers. 

Salt does not have to be a disaster unless 
it falls in lust with a coven of blood pressure. 

Weeds are weeds. There's beauty 
in the deceptive familiarity of that. 

Bees are addicts with built-in needles 
but have come to be adored regardless. 

Trees need to be tied with roots otherwise they 
spend nine-tenths of their lives running away. 

Love me back and let's see how long it takes 
for my toes to begin sprouting leaves again.

Marcia Hindson’s work has appeared in The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed With Pipework, Bare Fiction, Riggwelter, and Atrium, as well as others. She has recently learned that her garden is not a scary place, so is currently coaxing a myriad of root vegetables to come and live there. She will, of course, end up naming them all.