Isabel Galleymore

Isn’t it shocking how he speaks for her? His thin voice wavering across the restaurant — she’ll have the cod artichoke bake. A giggle of  bubbles comes from behind them: a fish tank curtained with seagrass where a seahorse is tying itself to one of those slim, tweedy forms like a hand shaping itself  inside another’s the way my hand tucks into his like a difference pretending it’s not.

like a single branch of ash honed to the handle of an axe and made to take the hand of a woodsman as he throws his body weight to fell all the ash has sown, I turn your words although the line you spoke was simple