On Reduit Beach, St Lucia

Wireman wants to know whether he can fashion me a wire doggy, wire flower or wire soap-dish? I stand with my half-eaten bagel and flip-flops in Wireman's long shadow. I return to my wire house where I live with my wire husband and our wire daughters who wear wire wreaths in their hair and we live on the edge of a sea where there are real wire cuttlefish which gyrate at the bottom of the water. In my belly a new wire thing is simmering, caged in heat whilst blackbirds ooze and oil the sky, the air is spiked with iron filings and the wind will not lift. My daughters raise up their pretty wire necks to the vibrating coiled disc they call the sun. And I look towards the set of mountains where they will make marriages with wiremen. And the moon is soft and just an idea and we all spend our afternoons in the polluted shade of the rusting wire tree, not working on our sea equations or chasing the scent of bougainvillea but attending to our rituals of looking for those hard wire grubs in the wiry undergrowth.