Fifteen keys hang on a chain.
The chain is joined and forms a ring.
The ring is in a woman’s hand.
She’s walking on the dusty ground.
The dusty ground’s a dead end track.
The neighbours won’t be coming back.
Fifteen gardens overgrown.
Fifteen houses falling down.
The woman’s old and dressed in black.
She keeps her hands behind her back.
Numbers painted on the doors.
Posters on the locked up church.
Imagine what her eyes have seen.
We ask but she won’t let us in.
A key so simple and so small;
how can it mean no chance at all?
A key – a promise, or a wish;
how can it mean such hopelessness?
A circle is broken, she says.