You were (all of you) oh so delicate; crushed
-pressed against the glass; petals flattened
the sap from the midrib bleeding into each bruise
spread like the last of a jar of jam
Sweet Violets in a Bastard Mahogany frame.
Captured; the bastard
in the shuttered eye of a camera obscura
–his own blacked; in a fitting reprisal
delivered by the boys in blue; cheering themselves up
while in the station canteen
(I like to imagine) ‘Anyone who had a heart’
was played too loud.
We shut our eyes; tried not to see the months
the moments just before the dark chambers of your own
infant hearts had ceased to pulse
long moments that would grow, become monsters we hid from
if we did not reign them in with enquiries, with outcomes
with findings
though I have found it difficult since; to put from my mind
to forsake you oh my darlings, as I find myself still wanting
to suture the wounds in your frail petals
bewailing the ugly obliquity of your broken stems
my face (like your own might once have been)
pressed close to the glass for sight of you, lost
in childish rhyme ‘He loves me, he loves me not’
-you blow upon the comose clocks of wet-the-beds
skipping home from school.
WordBird. Poetry. Mainly. 