She pulls a shawl with porous tears around her shoulders,

shivers of trivial advances by cloaked men in all

The colours of her nightmares;

Consigning to herself in comfort,

The falsities of their words ,

She tugs at the sagging skin from her face,

Worn elastic band strands that

Had not been there last time she checked,

Overlooked by suffocating clacks of red heels on tarmac,

Inhaling the knocks which

Bounce off peeling rails of the riverside.

They unwind the window to dismantle

A million pieces of her soul,

Beneath the scrutinising stare of 

Narrowed eyes 

in the deepest grey of a charcoal cough,

Spluttering musty clothes  from the upstairs bedroom,

Until they trickle onto the street filled with only footsteps and thoughts

Replete with conviction in steel cuffs.

Round the corner lay the waiting dogs,

 in the snare

Of their masked fangs ready to emerge 

In the line of silver moonlight,

 the revenge 

That She was waiting for,

Bringing hunched frame to unnatural bends

Of the meandering waters,

Stopping, she watches beneath the stooping concrete defence line,

Wishing upon the ripples of coastline waists

To suck her in beneath their belt.