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Maud

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Torn skirt billowing behind you
like a parachute,
you fell,
fell,
for the telescoped eternity
of two seconds.

The pond turned its blind eye
to the sky,
and the shuddering gate
swung shut.

No one was talking.

Next day, the sun stirred
the larkspur into bloom again.

A rambler saw the flattened weeds,
suspected a fox,
and poked around for feathers.

They found your body later:
drowned in the darkness of the wood.
And raped,
or so the papers said.

‘A rendezvous with death’
was how one writer put it.

The police are looking for a man in black.

First published in Landfall.