We have each been our worst ever kiss
to someone else
on a warm evening,
leaning on the boot of a car,
filling the silence with reams of words,
them asking if you’re trying to be strange.
Mine was a hard tongued boy
who I passed into the mouth of a laughing friend
during a demonstration one night of our worst ever kisses.
We slept in front rooms like baby rats
on the floor, covering the carpet.
We learnt tricks
like how to make our collarbones
as prominent as possible
and how to be interested
without being too interesting.
My friend’s hands were beautiful,
as were everyone else’s.
I looked at them when they tapped pens in maths
or painted PVA glue on their fingers.
The worst parts of ourselves
were the best parts of others, it became increasingly clear.
Our English teacher
had a keen interest in serial killers
and their motives.
He mentioned this twice.
Who can say where one house ends and another begins.
I envied girls with space between their thighs,
with more than three bedrooms in their house.
At night I could hear my neighbour plug
her phone charger into the wall
which was her wall and my wall, both.
To teach myself about nudity
I sculpted a semi-3D likeness of a woman’s naked back
using rolled up pieces of newspaper
to make her spine and shoulder blades
rise up from the page.
I ran my fingers over her.
Everyone must feel they’re being
outstripped somehow
we were advised often.
In gymnastics we did back flips
repeatedly, in a line, until we were told to stop.
On the first day of a spring term
we found a fox floating in the swimming pool.
We lay down in the snow on the school field
in a star shape, letting ourselves go cold.
We couldn’t believe it when teachers returned
from a summer holiday married.
Details of our predecessors were well documented;
the girl who blinded herself with a fretsaw,
the girl who sewed through her own hand,
the girl who set her hair on fire with a Bunsen burner,
the girl who hung herself in the bell tower.
In our final assembly we performed
a musical with lyrics inserted
for the sole purpose of mocking our teachers.
One girl had cuts on her thighs,
one girl was pregnant.
People lost their virginity mostly on sofas
or in the backs of cars.
We were told to make the most of our bodies.
On the school sign we changed
‘Independent Day School for Girls aged 3-18’
to ‘Independent Day School for Girls Certified Criminally Insane’.
In our final Latin class, our teacher wrote
Crede quod habes, et habes, ladies!
on the chalkboard. He urged us to remember this
as we embarked on our lives as young women.
My friends were all around me, like birds.
Sometimes, in the sun, I remember
how we ungratefully acted out plays on the grass,
our belongings thrown over the backs of chairs
in a hot, shadowy room nearby.
Like this, in the snow
I remember the warmth of touching tongues,
walking towards my friend’s car –
a little alien thing, a polar bear’s solitude
stamped in four black paws on tarmac –
her hands on the wheel,
our words in white puffs,
what we spoke of.