Clapham South.

I passed through Clapham South a little earlier. On Friday, Malcolm Mide-Madariola was murdered here, stabbed to death, aged seventeen.

There were two girls, early 20s, crying and grieving with nowhere to turn. The area is so full of raw grief, the tributes do no justice to the emotion. This poor child, murdered on our streets.

There is no way to write about this other than in a medium which expresses emotion, so I wrote the following prose.  

Clapham South, two girls stand

By the piles of uncollected newsprint

Above, the departure board

Two minutes north

Three south

They stand facing the wall

Looking away from the street

Almost down into the depths

Searching for answers

Praying for reason

Nothing forthcoming

So they weep

An arm round a shoulder

Drawing one to another

It will never replace the embrace

The smell, sweet and sticky

They each look up and stifle

Suppress a muffled cry

Not wanting to be seen

But wanting to be near

The boy they loved

That everyone loved

Night descends again

Seventy-two hours

Yet it’s more like eternity

Cold air penetrates, it doesn’t smooth

It’s fresh, too soon and too cold

The embrace will never be the same

Another statistic, another death

But he is more than that

A son, brother, nephew, friend

And as his heart beats no more

We have all died without his wisdom

They’ve cleared the street

Evidence washed

Sawdust and water as if nothing happened

Only to be replaced by candlelit flowers

An outpouring of loss

The irreplaceable taken on London’s streets

The departure board reads the same

Trains are moments away

And yet we’re frozen

Suspended and hurting forever

Two girls stand

Looking at headlines already out of date

In the piles of newspapers

Awaiting the sorry moment for an obituary to appear

May his memory live forever

The seventeen year old boy

Above, fireworks explode

Outside, traffic waits in the frigid air

As the ignorant walk unknowingly past

The entrance to Clapham South