Janet & Prudence
I
Janet Stevens seemed
The sort of pupil who with concentration
Would shine amid the halls of education.
Janet shunned the crowd,
Though gossip in the girls' school simply bored her,
She noticed how the others all ignored her.
Lonely on the fringe,
A need to join the club and those who ran it,
To be a welcome member suited Janet.
She learned how to please
Her peers, when such a vital need corrupted
No teacher interfered or interrupted.
Yet there was a test;
To prove your worth and truly be successful
You had to make a victim's life more stressful.
Janet soon would find
The perfect target to promote her fully,
A new girl she could take apart and bully.
Prudence Cousins seemed
The sort of pupil who would never fight back,
A pale outsider, shy but on the right track.
Didn't act the same
As others did and while she meekly studied
No friendship ever blossomed once or budded.
Janet took her chance
To rise by making Prudence's road rocky,
She sneered at her in netball and in hockey.
Whispered hints she was
A lesbian or something more horrendous,
'Her red hair and her spectacles offend us.'
Term after cruel term
Through piling pressure on she would discover
The pressure came off when she hurt another.
II
Three decades went by,
That year dispersed and left behind their classes,
How rapidly we alter when time passes.
Janet Stevens now
Was married, middle-aged and very wealthy,
She owned a business where returns were healthy.
In this happy state
When she recalled her youth, like creaking hinges
Her acts created subtle guilty twinges.
Then one day in town
Just after deals to make her profits bigger
She bumped into an old familiar figure.
Prudence Cousins now
Was single, middle-aged and often pensive,
Her clothes were shabby, dull and inexpensive.
In a plastic bag
Were well-thumbed novels of romantic longing,
She looked eccentric where the mass was thronging.
Still she shunned the crowd,
For Janet and her club cohorts had branded
A fear of them that left her feeling stranded.
Never recognized
Her tormentor then scurried down an alley
With deep and hidden wounds no school can tally.
That night in the bed
Next to her husband at regret's first dawning
How Janet Stevens cried and ached till morning.
©