Imagine the feeling she felt to find a wall in
the city. Pretend seeing this blockade: to wake up
and find your sense of self so rudely split
and blood blocked up by barriers of grit
and stone. Immured and trapped. The promenade
has now been pieced apart by guns and guards.
Though even this sensation wasn’t new –
to have her body broken into two –
this construct ripped a rift she could not pass,
with blades of sharp and rusty August grass.
Graffitied cracks through which poor souls have tried          to escape,
but none outrun the trauma of the past.