She shouldn’t have been on the platform
On that fateful day in June,
The train she needed to catch would leave
Later that afternoon,
But I would never have met her then
If I hadn’t heard her cough,
And was offering her a cold flu pill
Just as the bomb went off.

I don’t think we actually heard it,
It came as a sort of ‘whoosh’,
The air was suddenly filled with nails
And bits of flesh, in a hush,
I felt her calf as it hit my leg,
Was blown clean off at the knee,
As she collapsed with a sort of gasp
And lay there, looking at me.

I think I must have been stupefied
For hours after the blast,
I only came to my senses, down
At the hospital, at last,
The girl lay flat on a trolley there
In the hospital corridor,
While I just sat and I held her hand,
My feet on the bloodstained floor.

I had some cuts and contusions but
She’d sheltered me from the blast,
And bodies lay in confusion as
They prayed, while breathing their last,
The surgeons tried to attach her leg
But too much damage was done,
The leg was dropped in a basket where
It never would walk, or run.

I found her name was Andromeda
After some distant star,
I told her that mine was Tim, she said,
‘I was wondering who you are.’
It was then I knew I’d look after her,
Would be at her beck and call,
For fate had pushed us together when
Disaster had come to call.

She didn’t take much persuading when
It came to me moving in,
For everyone else had backed right off
To see the state she was in,
‘They’ll never be tied to a *******,’
She said with a bitter smile,
I stroked her hair as I pushed her chair,
‘I’ll be around for a while.’

I don’t know whether she loved me back,
But I had fallen for her,
And thanked the lord for her missing leg
When I carried her up the stair,
She acquiesced with my every need
She knew I had to be fed,
And paid me back for each caring deed
By leading me to her bed.

She tried to cover her bitterness
To those who planted the bomb,
But still she seemed to be curious
Like who, and where were they from?
‘What would you do?’ I’d say to her,
‘If I stood them here in a line?’
Her brow grew black, as the words she spat,
‘Vengeance would be mine.’

And then the police had arrested them,
Two men from an evil cell,
Andromeda said she’d see them when
I’d take her to court, as well,
We took our place in the gallery
And could see them, looking down,
An evil pair, a defiant stare,
She pulled the gun from her gown.

I didn’t know that she’d got a gun,
She must have hidden it well,
With just one thought, and a loud retort,
She blew them away to hell.
She didn’t care what they did to her,
She said, ‘I’m not going to beg!’
Then pulling her dress up round her waist
She showed the judge her leg.

David Lewis Paget