The Girl with the Flaxen Hair

Jane Piccadilly bought a mistake-house. In a hurry.

While her perfectly white shoe sunk into something brown and offensive.

There was always a mistake-number-one with something new, wasn’t there?

And there was always only one mistake, wasn’t there?

Dear Alice’s little girl, plain Jane. The middle of seven sisters.

The one who was the least seen, but saw the most.

The one who could slip out of a family gathering, and no one would see.

The middle, invisible child.

The one who saw the bodies.

Jane Piccadilly made the mistake-house an un-mistake,

and her six sisters moved in-Poppy the librarian,

Violet the hairdresser, Daisy the carpenter, Rose the photographer,

Zinnia the botanist, and Flora the farmhand.

Then came the letters left at the front door.

And the strange man with a carpet bag who sat on the bus seat.

It all pointed to one thing. The unravelling.

Of the mistake house with its secrets.

Of plain Jane, and the threads that held her past and her present,

her trauma and her guilt and her shame deep inside her,

straining and breaking.

The truth always has a way of exposing itself.

Plain Jane wasn’t so plain. Was she?