At the scene of the crime ~ Emma Rich

Outlined in chalk

a chalk artist draws a yellow border round my body

reduces it to a specimen, pinned to the pavement.

I stand up, move to one side, peer down. 

It does not represent me.

He has traced the echo of a cut-out

articulated the ghost of a shadow

a negative space

an outline of who I am.

It needs embellishment:

a veined mapwork

of highways, pathways, clearings,

tracks of dreams, songlines;

there should be named rivers overrunning borders,

origami boats floating downstream,

bearing hopeful poems.

And words

streaming from my heels

as I walk away.

~ Emma Rich ~
published in The Broadsheet