No stone unturned.

by Oonah V Joslin

Turns out that paving stones

are not all made of stone.

Who knew?

There’s natural slate of course

and Indian sandstone

but the norm apparently

is man made composites

sort o’ concrete paving slabs

to curb maybe

my natural

female cravings.

And if I say 600 millimetre

yer man-o says 2 inches

and vice-versa

but men like inches better

they sound bigger.

And then when I get home

2 inch turns out to be

570 millimetres

which at a pinch will do but hey

who knew? So incrementally

the discrepancy

between us grew.

And big stones come

in packs

of different sizes

which cannot be split easily.

Perhaps the plastic acts as a kind of

strong nuclear force

that keeps them bound

so single-sized individual stones

can hardly be found it seems,

existing only

in the fantasy realm

of female dreams.

* * * * *

Oonah V Joslin is poetry editor at The Linnet’s Wings. She has won prizes for both poetry and micro-fiction. Her book Three Pounds of Cells ISBN: 13: 978-1535486491 is available online from Linnet’s Wings Press and you can see and hear Oonah read in this National Trust video. The first part of her novella A Genie in a Jam is serialised at Bewildering Stories, along with a large body of her work (see Bibliography). You can follow Oonah on Facebook or at Parallel Oonahverse https://oovj.wordpress.com/.