The archivist is a woman.
The archivist likes her tea dark,

coffee white. She’s a woman,
and she likes to walk the streets at dark,
shadow slight, she rests lightly

on what she’s looking for. A woman
once told her she was in the dark
about this place, her fingers lightly
printing the glass of the new local history library,

apparently homeless, or not even a woman.
Mary barely lets herself dream in the dark
about this woman with the lightly
lacerated mark on her face, her body braced against the library.
The archivist goes on accessioning photographs,

of women in the dark, the faces frowning slightly as they’re coffined into the library’s photographs –

they are still. The only movements as the film exposed were their ghosts. Mary signs the paperwork. The archivist is a woman. The year is 1972. She knows where she is, she wears tweed – and the Freedom of Southwark. Her hornrimmed pride. Her name is Mary
Boast.