Losing Track (Poetry)

It should have been above the coalshed door
where habit umpteen dozen times before
secreted it high on a narrow shelf
out of sight — known only to herself.

But when she reached to get it, it was gone —
vanished — with no clue to ponder on —
the implications hit her with a jolt
she went indoors and slid each hefty bolt.

She found it quite by chance beneath a chair
quite at a loss to know how it got there —
was she the victim of some joker’s game
or was her failing memory to blame?

She lay in bed awake — her heart grown sick
of listening to the clock’s unfeeling tick
and wondering if one night while she slept sound
a stranger with her key had crept around —

come in her room... She’d noticed other things
had moved — her silver hairbrush and her rings
and, weirder still, that portrait on the wall
was of a face she couldn’t now recall.

She heard somebody breathing, faint but clear
she spoke to them, her whisper hoarse with fear
no answer came, but in the light of dawn
a set of footprints tracked the frosty lawn.