Anger was a stone
that lodged in his teenage throat
with the width and weight of a boulder.
It started as a pebble in gravel
that grew each time it rolled
through the hurt of early childhood.
We didn’t name it
for fear that giving it identity
would somehow empower it.
Occasionally he’d let me handle it.
I liked to trace each ridge and ruck
perfectly preserved in sand and mud.
I witnessed the rage swell
in grains of scarp and glass
through angry holes in walls
an ammonite curled into itself
hiding its form in layers
of deeply cemented sediment.
It was hard to read the seam
to age and place each furrow.
Can scars be chipped from fossils?
Kate Young
Note: Snakestone refers to the fossilised remains of ammonites. They were given the name snakestones in England because they resembled coiled snakes turned to stone.
If you have any thoughts about this poem, Kate Young would like to hear them
