<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Broken Children<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I went looking for them<\/p>\n In the empty room<\/p>\n Where the sad music was playing<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And\u00a0 a woman\u2019s voice was singing<\/p>\n Of the deaths of children.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s a single window<\/p>\n Hung with cobwebs<\/p>\n Where half sketched faces<\/p>\n Look in through the glass<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Seeking their childhoods<\/p>\n Those lost toys.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They find them laid out on a table<\/p>\n Neatly arranged<\/p>\n Hands, feet, heads, mouths<\/p>\n The folded skin suits<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But the smiles are left out.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In another room a child is laughing.<\/p>\n Here there\u2019s no such sound.<\/p>\n Your brother is painting his night world<\/p>\n Your sister is sleeping in his cold bed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What is it you\u2019re whispering<\/p>\n Across these polished spaces?<\/p>\n What secret fear flutters behind the mask?<\/p>\n What fury flaps its wings at your back?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Stop all this nonsense<\/p>\n Crawl back under the sheets<\/p>\n Your mothers and fathers don\u2019t know what they do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But when the lights are switched off<\/p>\n And the bedroom door\u2019s locked<\/p>\n And nobody\u2019s watching<\/p>\n You can come out to play<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Set the silver top humming.<\/p>\n Tell the scary tale.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n David Calcutt<\/strong> is a playwright, poet and children’s novelist. His latest novel The Map of Marvels<\/em> is published by OUP. He works on a project making poetry with people with dementia and is currently writing a play for Midland Actors Theatre based on stories by Chekhov.\u00a0 This is his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Broken Children \u00a0 I went looking for them In the empty room Where the sad music was playing And\u00a0 a woman\u2019s voice was singing Of the deaths of children. There\u2019s a single window Hung with cobwebs Where half sketched faces Look in through the glass Seeking their childhoods Those lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2778"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2780,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778\/revisions\/2780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}