This is a place of turpitude

I found a note
written in a florid style
secreted in a rose bush
in the moist underbelly of
suburban Golders Green.
"Save me" it said and
"I have been besmirched'

The garden in which the rosebush grew
was bisected by a path
studded with seashells
which had once been
animate
like myself

Beneath the swollen shadow
of a Magnolia tree
under the wretched ochre and vermillion
of a shattered robin's egg
I found a second note
by a different hand.
"You may have read the first note, "it said.
"The provenance of its author is unknown."
"I could never completely trust her and neither should you."

It began to rain,
tiny waterbound crotchets
accompanied
the awkward timbre
of the stranger's words

As I turned to leave
I slipped and fell heavily.
Plunged into a world
without air
my face nestled
against an angry rock

In the herbaceous border,
within a sullen clump
of lavender
grown wooden
with neglect
there lay open a third and last note.
The nascent lettering of a child dripped from its page
like the slavering
of a rapacious dog

"I bare no malice towards the authors of the first two notes"
It read
"They were abandoned here as you have been abandoned,
they fell here as you have fallen,
they must learn to accept their responsibilities as must you"

And as the crimson fell from my lips as no more than a whisper to the soil

P.S.

"This is a place of turpitude."