Reflex

That was the time you caught
the mumps and I was half
afraid I’d catch it too.
Or it was measles and it was
me who had it, lying in bed
for days reading the bible –
children’s version, illustrated –
where the devil was all red
and had pig’s feet and horns
and Jesus wore James Brolin’s
beard and laundered robes
in the desert. They must have
been impossible to keep clean,
living on locusts and wild honey
and God knows what –
or was that John the Baptist,
the one who came before, who
wasn’t good enough to tie his sandals?
Like the one you lost that day
at the beach when the tide
came rushing in and we had
to gather up our stuff and run
to the dunes. I stood on broken glass
and you had to pick tiny slivers
out of my foot with a pen-knife
and I accidentally blackened
your eye when my foot shot
out in reflex defence. Or it was
Winter and I was sick again,
dreaming under a blanket
of thick snow – no, that can’t be right –
it never lasted, turning to slush
overnight, like everything else.

Brian Kirk has published two collections with Salmon Poetry, After The Fall (2017) and Hare’s Breath (2023) and a short fiction chapbook It’s Not Me It’s You (Southword Editions, 2019). www.briankirkwriter.com.