Riddles
Outside the Berber tent
the poet and I contemplate
the boundless Sahara sky.
And I wonder how I got here.
No bedtime stories, children’s classics
neglected, just weekly comics I learned
to read myself. My curiosity deemed
dangerous in down-to-earth.
Instead my parents fed me
stories of toil, showed
success through hard work. Left
me a legacy of labour.
‘The little red house has no doors,
no windows and a star inside.’
‘How can that be?’ I ask the poet.
She hands me an apple, a sharp knife,
‘Cut it and see.’
Moira McPartlin is the author of five novels. Her latest novel, Before Now: Memoir of a Toerag, is written in Fife dialect. Moira became a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle in 2022 and The Federation of Writers (Scotland) Scriever for 2022. Her current project is about Scotland’s concrete viaducts.