Exhibit in the Spellbound exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
They say you are in here,
sealed into this glass flask,
which is lined with silver as coffins
are lined with lead, the curve
of it shining smugly as a bulb,
a plug of red wax stopping the narrow neck.
If so, you are shrunken,
grown small, like a child’s fist,
and you dry and crouch
inside that airless globe,
your head drawn down to your knees,
a parchment lady.
I wonder how you got small
and how you got in,
whether someone drew you and lured you,
as wasps are drawn
by a smear of jam
congealing in a jar,
or whether you chose
to shrink yourself, to crawl in
the way that cats crawl off
to die unseen,
their instinct to be secret overruling
any desire for comfort or assistance.
Flask Said To Contain A Witch by Kitty Coles | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser
Kitty Coles lives in Surrey and works for a charity supporting young carers. Her poems have been widely published and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Forward Prize and Best of the Net. Her debut pamphlet Seal Wife (2017) was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize and her first collection, Visiting Hours was published in 2020.
