I’m haunted still by my cowardice, my silence 
that long-lost morning when my fellow student, 
flaunting a newspaper,
said loudly, in her clipped white-South African accent, 
‘I think that girl should be shot through the head’.

I should have snapped back, ‘Helen, that’s disgusting!’ 
and, when she expressed incredulity, should have said, 
‘I don’t want to listen to your sadistic fantasies.
I’m not shocked by that poor girl, I’m shocked by you’.

Would we have actually fought each other? Two 
young women scuffling in that respectable common room?
I edged away from her, and no one was shot.

She spoke, I did not.
For all I know she’s now a middle-aged gin-drinking 
lady, holding forth at her Conservative Club 
to all those hangers and floggers who pay attention, 
who nod agreement,
and also to people like me, who remain silent.

Merryn Williams lives in Oxford and has had several collections and anthologies of poetry published by John Lucas’s Shoestring Press, Nottingham, for whom she also edited an anthology comprising 50 poets, Poems for Jeremy Corbyn, 2016. 

Poetry submissions to thursdaypoems@gmail.com.