Christmas The day I ate a bauble. Sheen like shells, it was glassy and long, plucked from the tree, its silver strobed, as light as my arm. A bite, and the frail mollusk was undone. The glimmering splinters
were scales glinting
in the soft red gum and tongue.
The sleepy room roused in dozy panic
to the boy crying through broken glass,
the mouth a slush of opened blood.
The jags were picked out, like nits.
Christmas, with bleeding.
And the ghost in the spare room, rousing
the cat to kill its kittens. An empty chair
at the table, and stardust glitter in the teeth.
Philip Miller is a writer and poet based in Edinburgh. His poems have been published in print and online and his novels are The Blue Horse (2015), All the Galaxies (2017) and The Goldenacre (2022).