Face Reading

Two fingers can turn

with ease to violence:

some things must not be

permitted to grow,

so I weed with the white lie

of remorse

the limp strands

that a woman who traded

her worn schoolbooks for refuge only

to grey in entrapment

has said means I was touched by fire

and so will be

cold to the touch,

brightest before

slow death and joining the rest of

them,

those whose brows and eyes

are too ashen now to be even told apart.

I pay my respects by hand, quick in

the manner they left us

so that what remains is the

fear we never manage to sweep away.

Source: Hypertext Magazine (Hypertext Magazine & Studio, 2021)