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she lies under her bed with her nose almost
touching the dry sacking. it smells of
dusty wood. she counts rusted nail heads
so all her thoughts keep busy. she holds both
arms close to her sides and her legs together.
in their school the toilet paper is scratchy.
if she wipes her bottom blood comes. at break
she walks to the library and then sits sideways.
Alice Hiller is a London-based poet, activist and writer. Her blog interviews poets about "saying the difficult thing". Responding to her own experience of childhood sexual abuse, her current work centres around trauma and creative resistance. She runs poems along channels of beauty and play and experiments with the expressive powers of silence.
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