Beautiful Dead Things

They shower with insatiable curiosity.

It's too dark in here, she said,

turn on the light.

But he didn't want to see

the spray-painted figure

trapped in the window.

The plot was simple: they were

too beautiful. They had to die.

He could see the bloodstained tap

in the reflection of the vanity mirror,

blood splatters forming a kind of bridge,

reflecting rather than being reflected.

Stevi-Lee Alver is an Australian writer and tattoo artist. She lives in the middle of Brazil with her wife. She loves bush walks and waterfalls but misses the ocean.

This poem is part of the drains of her mind collection.