at Earl’s Place, Birsay

On our first day home we sleep until noon and
roast a chicken in a bag from Lidl. We drive down thin
wisps of roads to the Earl’s Palace— to Euphemia’s house.

Standing in the ruin in the rain I feel a pinch
—the first dig of the palette knife
ready to rip the paper from the walls.

Euphemia’s house is a womb mid-shed.
Stalagmites of tissue reach ruddy into 
a weeping sky. My period hasn’t been this heavy in years.

I cling to a hot water bottle on the sofa
for two mornings. You run your hands over my belly.
It hurts and the blood is ripe red, then cherry-dark, then old and brown.

You tell me that this is a good thing, the shed, 
that in these early days alone at the top of a blustery hill
I am shedding more than just a lining.

Outside the Palace, someone has braided a ring of carnations 
the colour of fresh-torn flesh around the mouth of a well. Rain lashes 
their thin vellum, darkens their petals to that of something forgotten.

The bin beside our bed is heavy with blood-soaked tissues.
It is so easy to forget how much a body needs. My chest
jolts like a hare’s twitching eye in the night—

At Euphemia’s house, a calico cat hides in the stone memory
of a sitting room, her belly slung low. She flicks her tail and
curls inward to keep her almost-brood tucked safe beneath her.

Later, you run me a bath and when the hot water 
runs out you boil the kettle. I lay back and watch the rain 
hammer on the skylight, new heat pools around my toes.

at the Ring of Brodgar

Restless on the drive back from town
where we bought antihistamines
and went to the bank, he wants to show me 
something ancient
something far from the chatter 
of sim cards and emails, from the suck
of financial planning and the fastness
of it all—

He takes a photo of me with the calcified giants
in the background. On a more blustery day, 
my braids would whip round my head like snakes
but it is a perfect day 
and the washing is grinning  
on the line at home.

A blue bottle lands 
on a patch of lichen 
that mimics a sand dollar
or a puddle of breastmilk,
its cerulean abdomen twitches
just left of W.B.K. 1873.

On a more blustery day, we might’ve 
gone home, poured two glasses of whisky
and built a fire. But now we are here

and when he takes my hand 
as I stare at the cobalt body
of a matlo on a standing stone

the world is a cairn 
blanketed with heather
in the Orkney sun.