On a cliff top a lone woman bends fragile among the poppies as spring ends.
The storming sea watches her watch them die,
its mouth wide and mean, spitting and gaping.
Their faces don’t turn to her like they used to,
friends, brothers, fathers, lovers.
She remembers slinking inklike
into rooms lined with buttoned green coats
flickering and proper in the firelight,
relishing the way heads would swivel
as she would overpower even the most fearsome of men.
Now the petals drop from the poppies,
weighed down by rain and sea spray, plummeting like rocks,
enveloped in the folds of soft grass. They disintegrate and crumble
between the oils of her fingers and she jerks
back, a pang in her chest.
The bellowing sea laughs and laughs.