She was wearing black when she drowned
A black top under a black long-sleeved shirt,
black jeans and black leggings
aged 30 to 40, maybe Eritrean, maybe not.
Two days earlier, on August, 24th,
she had boarded the Abdol Rahman
in Zuwara, crammed with 375 others
on the 50 foot long, double decker
that capsized in the Strait of Sicily,
the third to overturn that weekend.
In Augusta, a town near Syracuse,
migrants are lined up, photographed,
numbers on their chests, the living
dispersed; the dead, drowned,
crushed, suffocated, faces bloated,
stomachs burst from heat and rot,
are laid in coffins. Hashtagged.
Buried. Forgotten.
Three years, fourteen thousand dead
in those ninety miles between
Africa and Europe. There are
one hundred miles between
Fishguard and Rosslare, scarcely
a score between Dover and Calais.
Just imagine.
Would we still not care?