There's a girl round here
with a barbed wire spine
and ribs like the bars on prison windows.

She smiles for strangers
and claws at her skin, tries
to find a way to open up and let them in.

And there's a boy as well,
with bloodshot eyes,
who screams inside his head all of the time

and stands on bridges
lingering for just a bit too long
as he dares himself to leave.