Fear

It is a yellow, patched house with a door the colour
of old blood. She has lived there all her life.
It has a yard with not much in it.
And a garden where hens scratch.
It is hot there, in a parched dry-throated way.
Inside is too dark, outside too bright.

What she does is bury it. Holes dug
wherever the ground gives, wherever she thinks
she may not go. Then anywhere. Now
the yard's used, the garden's mined,
nowhere left for burying. She walks,
back pressed to the house walls, afraid of footfall.