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