Wilde’s Street
Wilde’s words are his harbour –
they remove the solitude from his cell.
Pen in hand,
thoughts scurry to pass the prison’s perimeter.
His hand takes them.
To the brothel,
where men calculate how desperate Sal is
Ten pence? Four shillings? One even?
Her malnourished children huddle together,
their fingers blue and
hair damp from the leak in the roof.
Will their mother bring bread and milk tonight?
Who gathers by the river?
Society’s stragglers
who stumble, misplace their footing
and spy silver coins out the gutters.
Two men disappear down an alley
far from the streetlights
only here can their lips meet.
This is Wilde’s memory –
his conviction.
Will he and Douglas ever be like this again?
Now Wilde descends.
He clutches the paper
with inky fingertips –
a crime in itself;
the evidence of an imagination
graffitied over the wall.
~
Jasmine Siddle is an English Literature with Creative Writing graduate from the University of Reading who loves to write short stories, poems and screenplays.
