Alison Hadley, Louise Everett, Sandra Smith and me
were the gang, but when we played levitation, we needed five.
Eager Mary, with her darned socks and uneven hems
didn’t mind being the corpse. She lay down
on the red patterned carpet and we knelt, two on each side
she looks dead she looks dead we intoned the incantation
she is dead she is dead she is dead she is dead.
When we lifted her one finger each, it was easy, like always.
Then we felt the weight rise from our fingers
and looked up. She was hovering near the ceiling
by the fly-blown lampshade, smiling broadly
in a way I’d never seen before, she even looked pretty.
Don’t let her go, Alison shouted, but her ankle
slipped from my grasp like a wet potato. She giggled
as she blew us a kiss and swam towards the open window.

We said she’d gone to the toilet and never came back.
The hunt went on for days, weeks, years. I lay awake
wondering if she was happier wherever she landed.