Unbroken • Poetry

twenty

there were men, once,
who walked too fast,
I imagined their bones shivering
as bare feet made conflict with broken glass,
shattered onto flagstones.

but i was too scared to ask
why they needed my spare twenty pence,
small as I was. fearful as I was, I only cared
about my own caged soul,

never mind that their wings were forever broken,
and so when the cage would open,
they could only stare at the empty space above
and walk too fast, again.

maybe they stared at what stars there were,
laying backless into the gutter as they were,
or huddled under great concrete domes
that looked like heaven, but stank like piss.

forever fragmented upon broken stones,
waiting in the rain,
for the twenty pence that never came.

Spring 2019