Holmlea, Revisited
Begin with the noise of birds; an owl.
Add the wind, the absence of rain.
Stir in the silence of an abandoned
house. Imagine the sigh
of an attic hatch as it opens:
the staleness of that breath of air.
The whisper of wigs grown feral
without a scalp to comfort them.
The murmur of silverfish swimming
through books stunted by darkness.
Consider the stories that were swallowed here.
Memories of bairns scratching maps along
the joists as, outside,
it snowed and snowed.
Two ghosts that gulp broken DNA
through reservoirs of inherited blood.
Bin bags full to bursting with forgotten Lego cities
unloosened to ruins in a haar of melancholia.
Footsteps, familiar despite their distance;
a pair of eyes that cannot bring themselves to see.
Watch the rafters billow with sad spectres
of the wide-hearted child she used to be.
Marcia Hindson has work published or forthcoming in The Interpreter's House, Tears In The Fence, Bare Fiction, Obsessed With Pipework, Riggwelter, and Atrium, among others. Born in the north of England in a small mining village, that strange landscape influences her work and the way she processes the world.