A rookery, long abandoned now,
had been built inside my body.
I don’t know where the birds went
or why, one day, they uninhabited,
leaving only their barbed-wire
residues, strung across the boughs
of my hips; all sticks and spit,
all hollows meant for holding
something small, still desperately
alive. I’m sorry – I’m afraid
I know only my own dark canopy,
its filtering bones of light.
- by Roseanne Watt
UK
