Unlit Stove

There was no warmth in that room
The stove was never lit
And upstairs her children slept
Milk and cookies beside their cots
Huddled beneath heavy eiderdowns
A towel blocking the vents in the door
While downstairs something rots
It rots, it rots

The nurse came but she was too late
The mother had already embraced her fate
Coal gas descended and her neighbour slept
Enveloped in dreams beneath crisp sheets
Of cream, a freshly baked cake
Coated in icing sugar, breath slowing
Unaware. It was not that he did not care
For he had imbibed that poison too