Without Her

When a body is found on a bike-path – 

When a body is found in a garbage tip – 

Where a body lies under a bridge, over a border

in the basement of a suburban home, washed up 

on a beach, without her 

hands, without her clothes, without 

her name, the story can begin.   

Without her, 

there’s no story, no cast

-off stitches at the wrist

of a jumper, knitted rib by rib, neat. 

Without her, the cast

fidgets and scrolls, unravels. The cast

of light across the bank that held her 

breath falters, wintry. 

She set off for school. 

She set off after her nursing shift.

She set off for the laundromat.

As though all women ever do is set off

then someone stops us. 

Last seen sitting at the bus stop. 

Last seen buying chips on her way home.

Last seen getting into a car with  – 

All the seeing 

of women. All that’s invisible – 

hands, history, hopes. All that

bright violence casts her into a place  

where there is no way she can speak, 

nor a way to leave. The gag, the lies. 

Without her

clothes, there is nothing between her body 

and the lens. The watching, the want, without

her. Gazing at the puzzle of her limbs,

night after night. Sofa juror, Uber Eats sleuth, 

amateur forensic crew. Now someone’s cut  

out of her own life. Now someone

who survived the raised arm,

the blade, the wheel of falling

strap, flinches. Now someone’s secrets squirm 

and shriek. Don’t tell. What’s as real

as night terrors, sharpening

their teeth in your body, flooding

your blood the way a disused tunnel

floods and flushes her body to the bank.  

Police find your body

and take it apart. The puzzle, the job.  

Don’t tell them it was you. 

There’s a skull buried under 

the apple tree. The bones of a hand roll up

one by one, from the deep dirt. When a body

gives up its secrets, cell by cell

I sure as hell won’t tell.