Tonight’s offering of poetry.



Along the dusty track she wound her car

round the bends, at breakneck speeds.

Young and full of confidence, MP3 player

at full bore.

What was playing that day, as the wind whipped

through the open window, elbow hanging out

like some action-packed hero, invincible and full

of confidence?

Sally had told her that afternoon, about the

schoolyard plot to gang up on her; she didn’t

mean to be so good at English and use ‘them

big words’.

No she didn’t mean to inspire such hate and was

shocked when it came, and hit her like a stomach

punch. She pretended she didn’t care but the air was

gone from her lungs.

Round the bends she wound her car, a little second

hand Lancer her mother had bought for her. It gave

her the speed that blurred the fear she felt and the

weight of the hate.

That last bend, they say, she took at 100 miles an hour.

The little Lancer went head on, into the tree. The force

threw her out the door and she was DOA on arrival.

They pronounced.

The next day at school, the mean girls stopped for a

moment in fear; what if someone found out they had

slipped her a note the day before, just to say they would

kill her?

But no-one followed up and they were off the hook,

and because no-one did, they thought it was alright

to tease and taunt and hate, and drive the next girl

and the next,

over the edge.

By Maryann Weston