CRIME FICTION

Photo by Araix Rand on Unsplash

Why this fiction,

the bookshops

packed with deaths

browsed on shopping trips.

The frisson of vanishing,

dangled by lanyards

or dumped when read

on beach towels.

The humming of violence.

I've seen such men

in parched gardens,

faces lit by a late sun.

They search for victims

or just company as

I read my Maigret

or Ripley.

It's some sickness

we share - the only

fables now made.

And I’ve looked

for a lost child,

desperate, speeding

the wrong way past

a darkening park,

shouting her name

over empty fields.

One second was enough,

let alone a novel.