The Wind in the Wires

She went with a friend for the evening,

But she wouldn’t tell me where to,

Just turned as the two began leaving,

Said, ‘Where I go’s nothing to you.’

She liked to be so independent,

Go off, and leave me on the spot,

Then tried to make me feel repentant

For asking her why, where or what?

I sat up and waited till midnight,

Expecting that she would be home,

She must have known I would be uptight

Not knowing where she’d gone to roam.

I knew that her friend never liked me,

Would glory in turning the screw,

Encourage Darlene to defy me,

She’d tell her, ‘So what can he do?’

She hadn’t returned the next morning,

Nor even when it became noon,

The sun towards eve began falling,

So surely she must return soon.

I passed the time on the computer,

Watched Facebook alive on the screen,

When Darlene popped up using FaceTime

Then suddenly started to scream.

‘You’ll have to come in here and get me,

I seem to be inside my phone,

I tried leaving, it wouldn’t let me,

And Marge went and left me alone.’

The face on the screen began fraying,

And she was hysterical now,

Her face in the picture was greying,

‘I’ll come for you, just tell me how.’

‘Just follow me through all the windows,

The frames are all breeding like spores,

My mind’s in a haze, I’m caught in a maze,

There’s many more windows than doors.’

I looked for her picture in Instagram,

And searched for her trace in What’s App,

Then Googled her name, she ran through a frame,

But all that I caught was her back.

The high tension wires running overhead

Were humming and whining all night,

I lay in my bed, convinced she was dead,

Then heard her voice moaning in fright.

The Darlene I knew never came back home,

She travels by churches and spires,

A crackle in time and a hum in the line

Tells me she is the Wind in the Wires.

David Lewis Paget