life is a damp affair, a soggy business,
a curled, fleshed, oyster-like thing,
a creature of tissue and salt.
and the rain rolls through in a flush of joy
to wash the heat from our skin.
we are some being, some briney mollusk,
ribboned and frilled and twitching,
slick on the tongue,
sleeping in the shell.
a human is a lizard,
lying on a rock at the beach. the things
our skin is most meant to feel: the slide of wet,
the heavy liquid thrum of love. the sounds
our ears are most meant to hear: the glorious pulse of sea,
the ocean of our blood.
Meg Drummond-Wilson is a student at the University of Western Australia, completing an honors degree in Archaeology. Her thesis is about class and gender in institutionalized children in Western Australia, and how it manifests in material culture, also known as stuff, also known as things. She was raised in a fishing village pretending to be a relevant city by bibliophilic parents and a steady diet of Enid Blyton, and discovered that writing was a good way to pass the time as soon as she was capable of stringing more than two sentences together. She currently enjoys poetry, research, gossiping about dead people, Australian summers, being uncomfortably in her feelings, and folk music. She has previously been published in cahoodaloodaling and Pankhearst.
