1956

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Humbert never left.

See the poisonous gas that

Rinses my nation

Runs through the cells

The earth of this ground.

A child just 12, dancing along

To the perverse anthem the man taught her

The strings tug and pull

Soft limbs going up, down and left and right;

The theatre never ends.

She scratches her name under the desk

“B U D A”, and split in half by lightening

The children ring their cries like church bells,

Succumbed to the towers, lonely apartments that

Stand tall like soldiers ready for command.

Everywhere they stand, they cast a shadow.

She’s still sitting at her sullen desk

The rust hugs her hips, her rails –

While the mad roam the earth.

In her textbook written in bold

Are the falsehoods of his hands

Capital letter after capital letter,

She copies out the lies, the full stops –

Wishes her life was one big

Ink spot.

Who knew the pigs could be so hungry

The plurality of individualism! They squeak

(The strings tug)

Her arms frantically cheer and reach for their trotters

Now, to think they plucked her from

The womb of adolescence,

Tore her lungs, banished her growing breath

Look to the Nymph

The true, Aristotelian tragedy.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” writes the historian.