Wherever you are, there is always a giraffe

Wherever you are, there is always a giraffe

after Judy Johnson

Cool as a whale

Mrs Haydon is stepping backwards through water

patient with this small giraffe

who has failed at every sport

all neck and skittery hooves,

large-eyed, patterned with shame.

The giraffe goes down, commanding her eyes

to snap open, kicking the way she has been taught

trying to blow the textbook bubbles

one two three and turn her fine neck

to gasp, so loudly it hurts her ears,

the air that saves her life

for another moment. Again

with fight-or-flight desperation, again

with Mrs Haydon’s voice playing in her head

straight legs, lift your tummy

and her own voice too, screaming at herself to do it, do it

until her legs burn, her nostrils choke,

the certificate floats farther away than Africa

and she knows she will die here, now,

her ears awash with plughole terror

and a fury of incompetence

pounding in her head like a hoofbeat.

Wherever I am, there is always a giraffe,

asking if it’s worse to drown, or fail.