Tag Archives: childhood

In Search Of The View

You striped your shins raw and red

spilling from an open window

onto the porch roof outside.

 

Hands flat against the bitumen

you brought yourself upwards, tall,

bearing gravel bitten palms.

 

My hands will ache at the thought,

of your smile through the lifted glass,

half shadowed by the sunset.

 

Second, I was more careful in the going,

kept my skin as it should be,

clean, whole, unharmed. I did not spill.

 

Then we watched as clouds scudded

east to west on slow, hidden winds.

 

Your slips always taught me lessons.

Like how to pick old wounds clean.

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Ripples

The ripples are gone when I look,

searching the water for a slip of silver

twisting back on itself

leaping skyward in panic

or ecstasy perhaps.

I think about you and I,

or at least the phantom of us

that clings to my lungs on slow days,

crawls onto my shoulders

to press my face down, down, down,

down where I deserve to be

when my own body twisted back on itself,

my mouth searching for a way

to swallow the words I’d spoken,

to return them to the saftey of unspoken

rather than the spotlight

of my glowing red cheeks

as I fumbled to dress myself

in what I thought was maturity.

I can feel nails along my spine,

when I think of how much

I wanted to be loved.

Imagination

When I was little

I turned cardboard boxes into playhouses,

stacked them one atop another

until I’d built the tallest tower in the world

or the biggest castle ever seen.

 

The settees in the living room

were princess beds

or safe land when the carpet turned to lava.

Stepping stone cushions were employed

to cross treacherous territory

without risking loosing toe or limb

to the fiery pits.

 

In the corner of the room was a cupboard

where the toys and games were kept.

We’d ransack the two shelves

leaving them bare and empty

ready for conversion

into bunk beds.

 

Our garden was besieged by monsters

that only my sister and I

could defeat.

Defending the keep at all costs

we fought battles across the grass

and through the orchard

onto the desert planes.

 

When the games reached their end

we’d hit the reset button.

Go back to the beginning before the victory

replace the villains anew

and start over in our efforts.

 

If I’m honest,

we never really stopped playing.

Daily Post: Imagination 

 

Speed Bump

I always forgot that the bump was coming. The little humpback bridge on the road to The Wharf. The one that sent your stomach into your throat, that had my sister and I whooping in the back of the car, small hands clutching the seats, convinced we had momentarily left the ground.

I could believe we were flying back then. When you’re small everything seems bigger, faster, brighter than life. Granddad’s driving was like that for us. Bug eyed at seventy on the speedometer. We thought that was the fastest that anyone could possibly ever go. He was wild and exciting, not like those fuddy-duddies crawling along at twenty down the A41.

He doesn’t take the bridge as fast as he used to. Now that I’m older, I think he only sped up for my sister and I, to make us smile and shriek. A lot of what he did when we were small was to make us laugh. We were his princess, and he was out merrymaker.

‘Gone to see a man,

about a dog’ he’d tell us.

Greying with winter.

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Tonight’s prompt was to write a Haibun based on a childhood memory. I wasn’t sure if I was going to partake with this one as last week I wrote a couple of poems rooted in my childhood, and I try not to write to vary my topics when I write poetry or I end up writing the same thing.

In the end I chose a memory that hasn’t shown up in any of my poems yet. At this rate you’ll soon be able to piece together my whole childhood just from the poetry section on this blog!

 

Down By The Brook

The brook was our boundary marker,

it belonged to my sister and I,

and only us,

because it was only us

that weren’t allowed across.

 

Grown ups could pass.

They could come and go as they please.

With their dogs and their bikes

and their children of their own,

who raced across our boundary

like it didn’t exist.

 

It did exist.

 

On maps it marked a divide,

the line between Ash and Higher Heath.

But even our address forgot that.

 

And the bridge.

It didn’t look like a bridge,

all concreted in with the road.

Squat, fat and grey,

with weeds and grass on top!

 

It was a very unbridgey bridge.

 

But it was my bridge.

My secret, hidden bridge

across my very own moat

that kept out the monsters

lurking in the woods.

 

The first time I crossed

I managed three or four steps.

Then the knots in my stomach got too tight

and the sky seemed too grey

and the day too cold.

 

It wasn’t far,

just far enough that the house disappeared,

hidden by a bend and the trees

and I realised that no one would see me

if the monsters came out of the shadows.

 

For the first time I felt alone

 

 

 

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Written for the Daily Prompt: Crossing

Feedback on this piece would be greatly appreciated. I’m not sure what I think of the ending. I reworked it so much that by the time I landed on this one I was just happy that it didn’t suck as badly as the others.