Vigil
Day after day, did no one stop
or think it necessary, even neighbourly,
to ask about her
in that frightful upstairs room,
her hair unkempt, her white face
pressed against the window-pane,
her bush-baby eyes gazing out,
full of longing and pain
of another kind as her breath
steamed over the cold glass?
Did no one, no one at all, notice her
broken, imprisoned childhood
and put two and two together?
Or ask themselves why she never played outside
in the sunshine, in the garden
of her middle-aged step-father’s Yorkshire pub?
Or wonder about her feckless young mother’s invisibility?
When at long last they investigate
the room stank of dog-shit and urine.
Her vigil at the window is now over.
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