The Half-a-man
The giant statue in the main square is weeping
sky-blue and sun-yellow tears. Later, leaf-green,
then blood-red…soon a technicolour
dreamcoat’s worth of crying. Only, this is real.
Overnight, the statue loses a leg, next, a finger,
an arm, a hole in the chest, part of its face…
The one eye left is a grey pigeon-shit splatter.
People stare, but only in passing.
Whatever, whoever, is responsible, the stone body’s
slow disintegration becomes unstoppable,
as silent and inevitable as the work of a ghost
unable to escape, destroying its only past.
No one in town recalls who the statue was,
how it was created, why it mattered
to remember. Nor why they now hate it,
only that they do, without a glimmer of doubt.
Playing hide and seek with her friends
around the half-a-man and his cracked-paving
shadow, a child pauses to pick up, then gather
in her arms, the lonely confetti of dirtied tears.
She sticks the rainbow pieces together,
then gives him back a paper heart
and puts her ear to the ground to hear it beat.
His pulse only lasts a day before it’s torn down.
Sarah James/Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Her latest book is her CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry 2021 collection Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press, 2022). Website:www.sarah-james.co.uk.