Harrod’s Christmas display window glinting spills
glitter snow beads white on the white
porcelain of a mannequin’s perfect bare
neck a shower of silver sequins across the stiff arm.
(A woman encased in black–a cape over the hair, over the feet, over the face, over everything save a net before the eyes–like the incarnation of death, a shapeless mass of secrets, a black hole where a woman would be, stares:
the mannequin meets her gaze and the woman blinks back.
What separates them I
cannot tell)
