I WAS WRITTEN ONCE

I Was Written Once

I was not born in ink, as you would understand,
No certificate to prove me, no seal, no steady hand.
Only water, cool and brief, in Cadeby, Leicestershire, England,
A name spoken softly, then loosed across the land.

They called me Anna—once—
And thought it would remain,
But names can fade like winter breath
Against a windowpane.

My brother’s path was certain,
His place the world would know,
While I moved through the chambers
Where quieter lives must go.

In Bosworth Hall I learned the sound of doors,
Of footsteps kept from echo, of voices kept indoors.
Not all who live in houses are meant to leave a trace—
Some pass like shifting candlelight that never marks a place.

Sir Wolstan Dixie 4th Baronet was not a man of silence,
Nor one the world forgot,
But I was not his history—
Or else I was, and was not.

I remember little clearly—
The cold, perhaps, the day,
When bells were rung above me
And time was closed away.

At St Peter’s Church, Market Bosworth they wrote me down again,
A date, an age, a surname—
No sorrow and no sin.

Nineteen years they gave me,
No more, and none before,
As though a life could be contained
In numbers—and no more.

So now I live between them,
Those entries, thin and small,
Not lost, and not remembered—
But something, after all.

If you have come to find me,
Know this before you part:
I was not made of paper—
I lived, though not in chart.

And though the lines are broken,
And though the proof is slight,
I was here—
In breath, in step, in shadow—
And in the turning light.