Nine

Today ended up being about a poem I found that I wrote when I was younger - a cheerful ditty called ‘What is a million?’, which for the most part I spent trying to define in terms of dogs, trees and colours, with an unusually melodramatic twist in the middle. What did I mean? I don’t remember the answers. Was I working through other people’s feelings, or my own?

I’m not a teacher, but I remember being surprised when I’ve worked with small children with troubled backgrounds before and asked them to creatively express themselves. Difficult stories emerged - stories they were happy to tell but I wasn’t quite ready to hear. I think about it often, and how I underestimate what I felt and knew.

I came to life longing,

More sun, more food, shelter

And attachment; I found universes

Secure on a page.

I penned my own, trembling and half finished

Looped cursive warbling downhill

And with irregular melancholy; “a feeling strong

from deep in you / that tears apart and rips

in two” -

where was I at nine years young

writing about that pain?

How I found reassurance:

bottling instability into a fountain pen,

quivering onto paper

until my hand was steady.

🎧 Listening to: Stillness - Secret Gardens, Erin Reus