by Nick Gisburne
She plays a game they say she cannot win,
Imagining the moment she will lose.
They showed her, twice, before they pushed her in.
The blood, the bodies. Somehow, not the shoes.
Determined now to never take them off,
She slithers through the corridors at speed.
Through soot and smoke she fights to kill her cough,
Aware the noise will waken those who feed.
Already at the margins of the nest,
Two creatures fall, dispatched without a sound,
But here, inside the nexus, lives a test
For which no worthy human has been found.
But she, perhaps, has something more to give,
A player who believes that she can live.
