Crime Fiction

Marcella Season 3 showing.

Bodies are littered

No dignity in staged death.

There's a serial killer, a mass murderer

in my city too 

But there isn't a saviour.

Not yet, anyway.

We have appealed, prayed, begged.

Bodies are littered in hospitals,

in crematoria, in garbage trucks

But we are on the internet.

Outside an ambulance pulls up

Shrouded men disembark.

We close our windows.

We  cannot bear witness anymore

to what we have done to our world.

A poster goes up on their door.

Covid 19 - Do not visit. Phone screens light up momently

with their names and house number.

We order more masks, more gloves,

More shields, more sanitisers

More seasons on the internet.

We will escape forever.

Now to wait for Marcella.

Marcella who had dark hair

Marcella who became blonde

Marcella a wife and mother, turned whore and avenger

She who killed her own, but still saved others.

Pickled Already

10 June 2020

Silence stretches from my study to the bed

I live in this jar these days

I am hiding from a virus.

I count days gone by 

Loving, birthing, breaking, leaving

Coming together again.

It used to matter so much

pearl and diamond days; sapphire nights

Rubies like blood transforming into wine.

I felt consecrated.

And then the service ended abruptly.

Children grew up; greys descended.

Now this!

Is it time to leave already?

I meant to live some more.

I meant to have the time

But not all of it.

Some silence - but not of this deathly kind.

So, I am hiding, hoping

waiting desperately.

But for what exactly?

Actually it doesn't matter anymore.

From the study to the bed 

is a vacuum. 

I am preserving

in juices of memory

Now tart and vinegary. 

I will likely endure

like a relish in the larder.

Too pungent, brought out occasionally.