I sit stifled in a room choked with silence

Sunlight unable to penetrate

The dusky residue of depravity

That remains, surrounds an early demise

When eyes beaming with youthful promise

Were wretchedly slain

By the lethal silver of a flashing blade

I now sit in the small secret room

Smothered but fighting to breathe

The life back into your memory

Some justice for a breathless body

That writhes indignant and tormented

In a decaying Deptford church yard

Now with window slightly ajar

Life enters in the form of a zephyr

Sweeping aside man-made parchments

Thrusting at slander, insults and libels

Manufactured to haunt you, defenceless and pitied ghost

Until now. Thus you are no longer stricken down

By more than a great reckoning in a little room

The quick movements of the elements

End the deathly silence.

Invisible footsteps tread softly

Towards the life

Natasha Haidar © 2004