I’ve come to see what remains of my son

before they wash the pavement.

There are flowers sticking out of a fence

where strangers have paid tribute –

dying leaves: a golden mass of light

still in their plastic.

As I approach the concrete melted into blood

a yellow-blue board screams:

Fatal                Gang               In Confidence

I step away from the cracks and see the guts

have said too much, each drop a part of him I knew:

the sheet where he was born

a nose bleed on a white, white shirt

outline of a boy with three knife wounds.

Why is it my child locked in an airless box

and not that man, frowning in his car?

Or her, a girl I do not know

and did not push into this world?

My blood has fallen on the ground.

I am the blood torn from his heart.

These strangers want to help me stand

but where he fell, this pavement

frames me gentle enough.

from Her Lost Language (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2019) 

Jenny Mitchell - Indigo Dreams

Twitter: @jennymitchellgo