(after Kate Clanchy)
We thought you’d like to know:
that the colour of my eyes, which is also yours,
smells of the sea, pungent
with bladder wrack, flecked with an approaching storm,
that your father’s hair, which is also yours,
is the sound of a stone lobbed into the deepest well,
splashing, then stilled,
that you’re likely to inherit our height,
which tastes of the cool, peat-laden spring
at the furthest reaches of Loch Maree,
that the shade of your skin
is smooth as the finest sand of Ullapool,
kissed repeatedly by a loving tide,
that you live in a tall, white building,
high above the ocean,
where one day, you will own the brightest eye.
