by Nick Gisburne
“Look after them,” she begs. “They’re not all bad.”
She leaves you with a box of silver keys.
A witch, you once imagined, maybe mad,
But now you simply wonder, “What are these?”
An empty house, with no one coming back.
Within, perhaps, the answers that you seek.
Another key, ungainly, bigger, black.
No harm to see inside, to pry, to peek.
Her living room is clean, old fashioned, quaint,
The kitchen cluttered, filled with copper pans,
And, from the cellar, whimpers, whining, faint,
Beyond the hum of old electric fans.
Her pets. Malnourished. Sick. Or dead, a few.
In dirty cages, copies, clones, of you.
