Sat on the roof’s middle.
Smashing the tiles with her mother’s hammer,
Light threaded fractures and a brown shard carpet.
White shoes laid to one side
(They weren’t what she had been taught)
Next to the big plant from the first floor landing.
There was no ladder
Or hatch,
And I’d never seen her up there before.
It was her first time without me outside.
She looked reclaimed; like a poor bedside manner.
Sun-flared blindness
When I tried to see what she was really doing:
Glinting? Singing?
Cajoling the plant for a partner (?)
Whoever held me forgave her shrieks of approval –
The same frequency at which I’ve seen cutlery be moved –
‘Rosie,’ new and unknowable.
Her song a code the binary can’t fathom,
Her dance a number the pixels can’t count.
I am the mirror cracked with good luck,
and she is the reflection who witnesses
Confused laughter.
She starts breaking the tiles with
The useful driveway below,
Enjoying the tinkling of sheltered explosion.
Clay to clay.
The dust takes a while to show up in clouds, but when it does
My handler stops shrieking.
Dropped a second time, my image blurs.
Sam Huddlestone 