square white world

ants mine the salt on my skin stretched out again on the riverbank my daughter takes the remains, my blood puppet, to bed, like a flopsy bunny ants seethe in the grass by the river, the river which sounds so nice it bubbles in pools in the mud-coloured rocks, running into the tide I can’t manage, I can’t, the acceptable face of a vacuum-cleaner sucker now what do I do with her? there’s always a fragile balance of dry grass to nests the same coloured birds pick and the mud-coloured fish pick in lines the lines of algae, blood-brown, speckled, mainly mullet