Daughter

Interlocked, we slide far between the cabinets. Away from the clamour of the schoolchildren and the cleaners, you tell me of your father – his pumice hands, the surety of his step, the sovereign that hung from his neck.

Here, must gathers: the glass rings fingerprinted; the labels curling brown, telling of South-West Africa, Zaire, Rhodesia. But decades have no hold on the amethyst, the lavulite, the asbestos silified and radiant, gouged still-beating from the earth.

You tell me of your father – his agate eyes, his yellowed teeth, scattered in a field somewhere outside. You lean to kiss me between the back of my ear and the top of my neck – that place that doesn't have a name.

"It's not too far," you'd said.