honouring a place of dark

black eye

now that wall I remembered

a face of a young woman

chiselled out of plaster

revealing a matrix of red bricks

tearing her out

wind tearing her hair apart

another wall in another city

same not-quite white wall

large black eye traced

with carbon paper like

mascara smudged down a cheek

white wet puffy

what happened

before carelessness played havoc

carelessness played

played

played

don’t play with fire

we all blamed the girl for starting it

thought her mean enough

to exclude her from our play

to burn her with nettles

when the house burnt down

they left

I never liked her anyway

but the flames didn’t eat away

that shame