by Nick Gisburne
Obsessions flow in rivers round her head,
In little broken boxes, tied with string.
She longs for them to vanish, but the dead,
The tortured phantoms sealed inside them, sing.
In each, a piece of something sweet, to her,
A fragment of a dream, too dark to see,
Destroys the silence. Knowing what they were,
She recognises what she cannot be.
In every box a splinter of the past
Reveals another perfect moment, lost.
Their crippled notes, chaotic, never last.
She listens, and remembers what they cost.
So many broken boxes hold her voice,
Their song, as always, someone else’s choice.
