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Jennie Osborne

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How to be Naked

First, you must take a train
to a station you haven’t heard of -
you can cancel your milk and appointments
but you will not need to pack.

The station will look familiar
although you know you’ve never been there.
Its name is picked out in sunflowers.
It is the end of the line.

You can walk in any direction.
The sun will, in any case, follow you.
That house you see in the distance
is where you told your first lie.

All paths will take you to the beach
which no longer has ice creams or donkey-rides.
Listen to the absent seagulls
and the heartbeating sea.

When you can no longer remember
your first kiss or your mother’s name
or why you came here, if you did,
the exact colour of your eyes

then you come to the easy part
of shedding clothes, exposing skin,
rolling over and over in the sand
which seems to be made of tiny globes
each one a stillborn world.

Page(s) 48

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