hollow hills, wet roads, black branch skyline pub smoke floatin’ through a wartime timeline forties nightmare buried in da bark then da seventies dragged it back from da dark “who put bella in da wych elm?” white paint drippin’ crooked like guilt itself train stations bridges bathroom stalls question marks growing like mold on walls kids skipped school 2 go stare at da tree old men lied creatively over cheap tea one swore witches danced wit severed hands one swore spies crossed oceans from foreign lands truth got stretched like cigarette ash british boredom mixed wit postwar trash raincoat gossip newspaper dread whole town sleeping wit folklore under da bed who put bella bella in da wych elm? cold wind whistle church bells overwhelm everybody talk nobody know well dead girls turn legends when da truth don’t sell tree roots twist like old radio wires some mysteries survive because people feed ’em reporters showed up wit dramatic coats half lookin’ for clues half hopin’ for quotes psychics makin’ money off haunted maps one lady sold “witch-proof” leather straps war veterans drank quietly in corners while teenagers treated death like horror performances graffiti spread faster than da facts ever could spray paint travels better than truth through a neighborhood bones in a hollow tree mouth fulla secrets city fulla theories nobody completed one said murder one said ritual one said “government” classic individual fog-fed folklore fed force-fed fear chalk-talk sidewalks buzz all year grim grin headlines drip wit flair human beings love despair when it ain’t theirs funny thing ’bout mystery people don’t want answers too fast sometimes da unknown keeps da town employed fortune tellers writers drunks priests all eat eventually from unanswered grief bella became bigger than whoever she bella became bigger than whoever she was bella became bigger than whoever she was that’s da tragedy hidden underneath da buzz real person once heartbeat skin name then decades passed now she just a phrase in rain kids in da seventies laughed ridin’ past da wall not realizing someday nobody remembers them at all tree kept growing roots stayed patient while humans built myths from fragmentation maybe that’s why da story survives not for witches not for spies but because lonely towns need ghosts sometimes who put bella bella in da wych elm? question still echo through da leaves and da phlegm everybody searching through da old black spell some stories stay alive because nobody tells rain hit da branches paint peeled slow tree still standing people still asking and somewhere underneath all da rumors bella probably just wanted to be remembered correctly needle drop
