My first elephant

by Oonah V Joslin

My first elephant

thought we were twins

my sister and me dressed in Sunday best.

Couldn’t tell the difference between

me in blue and her in green,

like he’d never seen children before.

He raised his great grey trunk

sniffing

all wrinkled not neat like us

not flecked with tweed

splattered with mud he was and curious.

I moved away

cautiously.

Decided I didn’t like zoos.

I was afraid

I might mess up my shoes.

* * * * *

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/.