Daughters in the Museum

There are traces of you in the museum

your waist-length hair

the colour of burnished copper and gold

got everywhere

flying behind and around as you slid across marbled floors 

beneath pre-Raphaelite beauties who

gazed ahead 

frozen

in melancholic humiliation

as your high-spirited animation 

flaunted the sort of life 

once possessed by

the inspiration for those lithe limbs

             held rigid within ornate frames

I shushed you in this holy place 

             you charged around

pointing and laughing at the naked angel

staring as though looking into mirrors

that reflected your futures

Water Willow, Proserpine, La Donna Della Finestra 

we splashed out and bought the posters

hung them on our plaster wall

to join us in our loud lives on the estate

with the ever-open door 

wild children and women running in and out at all hours

as we did not know the rules for civilised living

              we retreated into the hollow quiet of those images above us

trapped in unspoken trauma

The museum is closed now

under the restrictions

but we are still there

turned away from the exhibits

staring out from the past

I look into your eyes.