Flint by Thea Smiley

Flint                                                                                                                        

Months after his death, she says the large flint

he found on the beach and carried home

looks like a head.

In daylight on the slate floor, it is pale, dented,

misshapen as though melted, not the head

of a man,

but a dragon, blue-grey skin stretched over knuckles

of bone, edges brown like broken bottles,

creases gritty with sand.

She imagines his hands digging into the cold beach,

burrowing like crabs to feel the extent of it,

keen to know how big,

how heavy, eager to unearth and hold something

so ancient. She sees him rolling it over

to admire each face,

thinking of the tools it could’ve made, the fires lit

by striking steel against it, how useful

it would’ve been.

Then, it seemed like he’d given her a piece

of the North Sea, still rumpled, chilled

by depths unseen by sun.

But alone at dusk, when she glances at the flint

in the dim light, it’s made of bone, skin,

eyes. It could be him.

Thea Smiley’s poems were shortlisted for the 2024 Frogmore Prize, Second Light Competition, Sonnet or Not Competition, and the Metro Poetry Competition. Her work has been published in magazines including The Alchemy Spoon and Butcher’s Dog, and in anthologies from Renard Press, Wee Sparrow Press, and Arachne Press.