America
It would be so much easier in America; to be lost
in those endless rolling names that twist the tongue
in boundless, dreaming waves.
But where do you hide in England?
There’s nowhere to go when you’re just fifteen,
when you’re still just a girl.
It was him first. I got him out in the paddock, his back to me; felt the kick on my shoulder as I painted his back in deep Crayola red; watched him buckle, splash into the dirt like a broken scarecrow.
The sky was blue-grey like the enamelled gun metal.
I waited for a while, to see if he’d move.
Then came Mum, pushing past, and the mud leapt
at her ankles like the tongues of hungry demons.
She bent to roll him over, gazed at me with her palms,
deep red, upturned, like she didn’t know what I’d done.
She wailed like a witch. I got her in the side of the neck.
She dropped beside him.
By his side, just like always, just like she always was.
She let him do it, you know. All that time, she let him;
never believed me once.
I went out back. Jake was tied to the fence. He slopped towards me,
trusted me, wagged his tail as I scratched his ears.
There’s no one to feed you, boy. They’ve all gone away.
I felt his stale breath, held the barrel close under his throat
and it took me ages. My eyes were full of water; told him
I loved him and time slowed, stood still as my finger squeezed.
Click.
Empty.
I had to go back in the house for more cartridges,
reload, finish the job.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and headed down the hill to the road; headed South. I raised my thumb and so did my shadow; contemplated that long, long blackness stretched out before me.
But it’s easy to get a ride if you’re young and pretty.
And you can give yourself away so easily, once you’ve been taken; you can close yourself up tight, like a flower in the night
and it doesn’t hurt you any more; not when you know it’s just different people with their different needs.
And we all need. That’s what makes us the same.
We all do what we have to.
Page(s) 38-39
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