The Old Vanity Case

She stood and watched the tram dissapear,
a young child whose body was now rigid with fear.

Every week she went off to ballet on the tram,
with a half a crown, which she got from her mam.

They had practiced today for their latest show.
What she would do now she did not know,
as she watched the tram departing easy and slow.

For on a seat alone on that tram,
her vanity case sits forlorn and forgotten. 
Leaving that poor child feeling frightened and rotten.

Slowly she trudges her way back home.
The old cobbled street feels hard on her tired feet,
but that day she did not notice, when her mother she did meet.

The first thing mother notices are her empty hands,
"Where is your vanity case?"her mother demands.
She points into the distance and sees the tram disappear,
before she suddenly receives a hard slap on her rear.

She was never to go to ballet again.
With tear stained cheeks she sits at her bedroom window,
and wonders who it was, who took her place in that show.

© 2018 Taylor Crowshaw