When a View Can Eat You Up, by Frankie McMillan

Anguish, by August Schenck (Germany) 1878

When a View Can Eat You Up
​
There are times when a sheep will stare at you and you stare right back, the big sky
overhead, tussock waving on the hills and you hope no one is watching as you crouch
down to stare at the sheep, hoping for some sort of connection and you remember the
greasy lanolin feel of a fleece, the spinning wheel that bumped away from you until you
got the hang of teasing the wool, picking out the burrs, the odd thistle, dreaming of
socks and knitted vests and your old man in the kitchen heaping the wood range full of
manuka logs and not looking at you because there was another woman he was thinking
of and you in your anguish feeling the same as the ewe in the painting by August
Schenck; a dead lamb in the snow, a circle of crows and beyond that the shadowy
shape of wolves.

Frankie McMillan

Frankie McMillan is a poet and short fiction writer from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her work has appeared in Best Small Fictions and Best Microfictions. Her latest book, The Wandering Nature of Us Girls (CUP) was published in 2022.