Summer Salt

/Extract from my long form poetry novel: The Unquieting of Not Eve (Not Eve 2 aged 11)

We make the salt ourselves and we cut it to fit. He takes the sharpest of the flakes and he uses them to rub into wounds. He says this cleanses and heals, but we all know that he does it to watch the pain we must not express but cannot stop.

He does it to himself and makes us watch and he never cries. Not like we do. I have seen his trousers and the pink of his cheeks turn crimson and I do not know what to think of that, but I know this,

… here the salt is more than sea and less than salvation.

They say he blinded an Eve once - cleaning her eyes with crystals so sharp they cut the green of her apple right out. And they say he never said sorry. But it does not matter to me if he had. There's is the saying and then there is the feeling, and sometimes the feeling shows more light than the mere speaking of a word. And what he shows and what he says - never seems the same.

I have only had it rubbed into my cut fingers after shelling cockles, the salt. And like him I did not cry, and like him I did blush, but I think not for the same reasons. And he did not show me sorry and he did not speak it but I did. I spoke it. Because he needed the tears and I did not give him them. So I said I was sorry. And he knew.

We salt salmon and sprats

Cockles and Sand capers

and we serve it all on thin white sheets spread

crisp the rockiest part of the beach

He calls it the heathen garden party

And he spends the whole time preaching redemption

and stops everyone from drinking

He makes us eat the salt uncleaned and gritty

and watches us wither and break our teet

and he preaches through it all

The fish the mussels the capers the crystals

We chew it all

and still we do not drink - we dry

and the babies cry and

through it all he preaches compassion.

@bethkempton

@soulcircle

#stackingwater

Salt and water