A Year In The Murder Flat by Bella Basura 2011

At first the landlord didn’t tell us about the murder,
we found out after the lease was signed,
we’d already moved in.

In the end, I read it in the local newspaper,
she’d lived in the flat across the landing,
her husband stabbed her in a frenzy,
she escaped him but died in the stairwell.
I carried the constant knowledge
that the woman  had bled out on my doorstep.

The morning of the murder, he told me later,
the landlord had hidden in the bathroom.
The woman had died screaming and banging on a door nobody dared answer for fear.

Bella Basura 2015