SUBMIT LYRICS
Top 100
Album releases
artists
Community
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Correction Lyrics
Small Female Skull
by
Carol Ann Duffy
Back
Lyrics
With some surprise, I balance my small female skull in my hands. What is it like? An ocarina? Blow in its eye. It cannot cry, holds its breath only as long as I exhale, mildly alarmed now, into the hole where the nose was, press my ear to its grin. A vanishing sigh. For some time, I sit on the lavatory seat with my head in my hands, appalled. It feels much lighter than I’d thought; the weight of a deck of cards, a slim volume of verse, but with something else, as though it could levitate. Disturbing. So why do I kiss it on the brow, my warm lips to its papery bone, and take it to the mirror to ask for a gottle of geer? I rinse it under the tap, watch dust run away, like sand from a swimming cap, then dry it – firstborn – gently with a towel. I see the scar where I fell for sheer love down treacherous stairs, and read that shattering day like braille. Love, I murmur to my skull, then, louder, other grand words, shouting the hollow nouns in a white-tiled room. Downstairs they will think I have lost my mind. No. I only weep into these two holes here, or I’m grinning back at the joke, this is a friend of mine. See, I hold her face in trembling, passionate hands.
music video
Your name will be published. Leave fields blanks to remain anonymous.
Submit
Modal title
×
Insert media
Video URL?
(YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, DailyMotion, Soundcloud)
×
Remember me
Lost password
Sign in
Register