Ammonite
written by: Peter Sarkies
Sculpted in layers of red and gray,
a single, tight, logarithmic coil,
ridges regular, repeating;
a sine wave in silicate.
This is not she, merely her impression,
perfection preserved like wildflowers
pressed in an atlas.
But imagine the
tousled buoyancy of her last voyage:
she glides through the dancing
detritus of the sea bed,
fronds of flesh tenticulating,
her eyes shimmering like sequins, hypermetropic,
until some final glimpse of Medusa
placates her. Now she rests
forever in bland sediments.
Peter Sarkies is a Biochemist based at the University of Oxford, UK. He writes poetry and flash fiction in his spare time. He lives in Oxford with his partner and a ragdoll cat named Oberon.
