I eat so many sweets that by the time Rain and I get home, my teeth hurt. I brush them and make Rain brush hers. Then we climb up on to her bunk with a bottle of water, a stack of books and my laptop. I check my email and Del has already sent the poem. I read it through and even though I don’t know what all the words mean, it makes me laugh.
‘What’s funny?’ Rain asks. She is studying a world atlas, the page open at a map of Africa.
‘Just something Del sent,’ I tell her.
‘Show me.’ She puts down her book.
‘It’s a poem called “Jabberwocky”. I’ll read a bit of it,’ I say. Rain leans back into her pillow to listen.
‘’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.’
I wiggle my fingers and tickle her tummy.
Rain giggles. ‘More!’
‘You want me to read the whole thing?’
‘With actions!’ she says.
I kneel on the bed and round my back, trying to look like a monster. And I read, my voice low and growly:
‘“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”’
When I’ve read it through to the end, Rain claps. ‘That was funny,’ she says. ‘Did Del write it?’
‘No, it was someone called Lewis Carroll.’
‘I want to write one.’
‘OK, let’s,’ I say. I jump down from the bunk, pull my special poetry exercise book and a mechanical pencil from my bag and climb back up next to Rain.
She is muttering to herself. ‘I’ve got the first bit,’ she says.
I open the book and hold the pencil ready. ‘Go on.’
She holds a finger in the air. ‘She boobled down to the dirreny sonce,’ she says. She sounds doubtful but I write it in the book, spelling the words however they first come to me. Rain runs her finger along the line. ‘What do you think it means?’ she wonders.
‘Hmm. I think the person is stumbling her way to a murky river.’
‘Yes!’ Rain says. ‘Now your turn.’
I think for a few seconds. ‘Alone, unarmed, her tickery jonced,’ I say.
Rain giggles again and taps the book. ‘That rhymes! Quick, write it down before you forget!’
And we do this for an hour, taking turns and discussing what the words might mean. At the end, when we read it through, we change a few of the parts so they sound creepier or so the beat of the poem goes more smoothly. And for the whole time I forget that I’m babysitting or that Rain is sick and just focus on writing something good.
‘Read it from the start,’ Rain tells me once we’ve agreed it’s as good as it can be.
‘Why don’t you?’ I ask.
She twists her mouth to the side. ‘I’ll do some actions,’ she says.
‘OK.’ I hold the book in front of me and read.
‘She boobled down to the dirreny sonce
Alone, unarmed, her tickery jonced.
“What me? What my? What cooliers lie here?”
She whinnied furverly in the ghoulian ear.
And up he rose like a miney bront,
Waving his tammons and sleery flont.
“Don’t wake me, don’t shake me,” the ghoulian gristled,
And piped his phantons across the spistles.
A ploon bellowed out over the sheel
And she ran as fast as her miggens could reel.
“No more dirrenies,” she whispered aloud
And slumped back down to sleep on her mound.’
‘Want to write another one?’ I ask.
Rain shakes her head. ‘I’m going to pee,’ she says. She scuttles down the ladder.
I jiggle the pencil and the spare lead quietly ticks against the plastic casing. I want to write my own poem now. Another nonsense poem, or maybe two or three of them. And so I do. I write until it’s dark outside. Until Rain has finished studying her atlas and until Mum calls from the kitchen to tell us she’s finally home.