Charity Box
The fourth wall is glass stained with a nautical spelling of Hervé. That underused V a cross, crimson on the colourless flag; the birds of the sea slither by the ropes crying blue lines.
The pews get flooded on occasion, washing moss off the boots of the believers, brackish fluid kidnapping the flowerless green.
The third wall is ignored; speckles kiss its feet but avoid the body as they frolic amongst the oak. The blues and greenery serenade the cobbles.
A door eats the second, her planks heavy with glances.
The first wall changes its colours. The box, waiting to be peeled, nonchalantly accepts the makeover.
That grimy box, an oyster, chipped and sallow reads “for the poor” where a knife tried to open it. Stubborn, it refuses to yield with the cry “there are no poor men to scorn! Only drunks asking for dix francs!”
Its fife, drumless, relents as the shell is opened, viscous slough a cushion to three rough francs and a green pound.
Claire Trévien is a PhD student living in Paris. She has foolishly just started a blog to promote small presses and magazines called Sabotage: Reviews of the Ephemeral. She has recently been published in the Anthology ‘Dove Release: New Flights and Voices’ by Worple Press. Her writing has been been published or is forthcoming in The Warwick Review, Nth Position, Pomegranate, The Battered Suitcase, Danse Macabre, Fuselit, Gists and Piths, Clockwise Cat, as well as in anthologies published by Worple Press, Cinnamon Press and Leaf Books.
