The TV people labelled her 'grime',
rat-swamped London kitchen breed
of hoarded shitty nappies.
No amount of sterile dissection
of her unknown character
could equal what she had already done.
She was a user alright,
made a Voodoo doll of her wax flesh,
every needle between her fingers
eased in like candles on a birthday cake.
The mortician said
'She was just some addict found in a Dixon's Doorway'
as he clenched the plastic zip's gritted teeth
and mine.
She wasn't carried away
the way her mother used to -
tight to breast, head on shoulder.
She wasn't held the way her first lover had -
arms under legs and waist,
careful not to squeeze and bruise.
She was lugged.
Lugged like an old sideboard
that no-one could look at anymore,
hidden from civilised vision.
I watched my reflection in horror,
25 candles this year.
