The glints in our eyes were so diamond-sharp,

they shredded and tore her armour apart.

 

We cackled like witches and sneered like the rich,

hurled stones, spat saliva and called her a bitch.

 

We crowded the pavement, blew gum in her hair,

lined with her, dined with her, pulled out her chair.

 

We cast her adrift with no anchor to lift her;

like bloodhounds, we sniffed her – our alien sister.

 

Our conspiracy fuelled with foul, fetid fantasy,

we caught leprosy, lunacy in our supremacy.

 

Our spite-infused parodies elicited cheer

and our hearts were engorged by her cold, swelling fear.

 

When she cowered in corners, we formed a tight scrum

round the misshapen ball with nowhere to run.

 

Locked in a stall, her effluent shrine,

we invaded the gaps, an insidious vine.

 

Her voice was a ghost’s, white-whisper-thin,

trapped in her body, a mute mannequin,

 

and her Munchen face dripped like cold, setting wax

through the catalogue of our relentless attacks.

 

Though defenceless and frail, like a china doll,

we cracked her and dug ’til we’d scooped out her soul,

 

and she let her cobweb spirit be torn

by the grappling fingers of malice and scorn.

 

Now she sleeps in the ground crushed by dark, heavy clay,

content to be spared the bright, golden day

 

while we trudge through the seasons, silent, apart,

each with a shard of glass in our heart.