Left alone to play under the traboule,
armed with boxes of chalk for the pavement
three girls in pantalons et chemises draw
round a figure, no longer there, their school,
as you know has been closed for a whole year,
bask in courtyard sunlight on the cement,
only for an hour, they ignore the flaw
undone by civil engineers who built
la traboule, the tall passageway, to clear
église et état, out of sight and mind,
daughters of silk workers centuries old
enabled their children to hide and find
les demoiselles squatting above the cold,
angry sidewalk, rain pools from the slight tilt,
clutching their chalk to imitate artists,
on the ground, unwashed blood stains the concrete
under the flyway of the edifice,
restless to make art, the girls' palimpsest
defaces the unnatural beauty
evident in a scene, beneath their feet,
startling to see, blood never shifts in space,
violence leaves a mark, places a crime,
of the voracious court, its history
remembers more than its neighbors, girls play
and forget the reason they draw with chalk,
children rarely are told to speak or say
exactly how they feel, whether they talk
silently in secret, ask the dumb mime.
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