I CAME UPON A COTTAGE

I came upon a cottage in a wooded glade, protected from the sun

Hidden in the shade. I noted then its face forlorn of decoration shorn,

Windows hanging by hinges broken, the door in place as if a token

Of past splendour, surrounded now by decaying render.

This shoddy shabby erection, still resisting all inspection of

The ravages of mother time. Treading over years of grime

I through its portal entered, brave, tho' I a slave to fears of unseen hosts

That dark and dank old buildings boast, of spirits evil now past retrieval.

Through neglected rooms I wandered, as I pondered who had

Squandered such a pretty cottage home.  Up I gazed at oaken

Beams holding firm the cottage seams, then shafts and gleams of

Sunlight pierced the gloom of the dank and darkened room.

Lo, there wedged betwixt a cross support, against the upper limit structure

Was a sheet of paper edged with age at the near decaying stage.

With hands that shook I reached and took the aged missive down.

The fragile paper marked and stained a sepia brown dated back

A hundred years or more and spoke of some poor girls

Fears of sanity, and acts of sheer inhumanity.

Imprisoned here within these cold walls, the world impervious to her

Desperate calls, she viewed this place this dwelling base, her tomb.

She saw her doom within that room and wanted someone just to know

She had existed, to know she had resisted all the twisted machinations

And the brutal degradations her honour then to lose. It had been hers to

Choose life or death, which she had proclaimed with her dying breath in ink

Bright red, as she bled upon this very cottage floor her captor lying dead

Before her. I dropped the will upon the floor and staggered now toward

The door, because as I had perused this plaintive plea I began the awful

truth to see… the girl was me.