For the whole of November, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow) is hosting an ekphrastic challenge. Our mission, for those of us who accepted it, is to write a poem each day of this month to a visual prompt sent by Paul. Today we had a choice. Mine was this painting by Marcel Herms entitled After Minnie Left .

Please visit Paul’s blog to read all of the contributions.

The mouse in the corner

She had blood in her hair
and down her dress dripped,
her eyes wild with reflections of what had been,
seen and clean sheered away.

She ran out in the street with her wild hair
and bloodied lip, but she knew it would end
when the pavement ran out,
and her feet turned about,

that she’d hang her hurt head,
wipe the blood from her lip, tears shed,
and the sky would fall so low,