Little Red

These are the children
in glass bags,
cracked or shattered
from use,
hard and hollow,
chemically dried.

Merchants,
draped in gold and shadows,
sell death
like tiny souvenirs
of lives too short
to save special trinkets.

Little Red,
sixteen,
unwashed hair
with skin the colour,
the texture,
of old newspapers.
She always wears black
but her mother
will bury her in white lace.

Pallbearers remark
on the coffin's weightlessness,
vultures on the lightness
of their moneyclips
but like fortunate Marleys
more chains will gild
and circle their necks.