An impossible feat
A mouse can’t eat
Something one hundred and fifty thousand times bigger than itself
Yet
I am going to try
I’ll start at the feet
Small nibbles
Each day a little braver
A mouthful a month
Digesting the decades
A sceptic would say
Why try? What difference will you make?
I reply; A smaller beast casts a smaller shadow
Dedicated to Ms De Havilland
As a child they could not keep me from the national curriculum
I read one poet for four years straight
Inspecting his words
Until I knew the correct way to interpret
The sounds, the syllables
The emphasis, the meaning
I still remember the gurgle of onomatopoeia
Annotating the margins
Alliteration
How many marks to the question
But I also remember the library
The echo of the old building
Finding a book on myths
And writing down everything I could find
Proud to share my research
My teacher asked Did you get this from Spark Notes?
Or maybe it was Cliff Notes
It was one of the Notes brothers I don’t remember
Later on I got a high pass
I was asked to do another essay
Because my B could have been a fluke
I got a low pass
My teacher was satisfied
I replanted myself in the library
Where I was fed, watered and bathed in sun
The worker bees filling the cells around me
I helped myself to the nectar
Every day I got greedier
Until it was time to leave
I still remember the final words
If you can write like this you’ll go far
I watch too many high school movies
In the past I joked
That I liked to point out sociological inaccuracies
Tired tropes
Actors who are obviously too old for the role
Characters being unbelievably cool and confident
It was like an alternative universe
Where school is like how it should have been
Safe, inspiring and opening opportunities
I wonder why I only want to work in universities and colleges
Am I trying to remake my own high school movie?
Refusing to leave until I get the ending I want
Throwing pop corn and booing
Pointing out errors
Being an awful customer
As I remind those in charge this service should be better
Seething about a vanity build, large salary and garden leave
Wondering what this will all achieve
This high school movie is neverending
Mixing nostalgia with pure fiction
The plot being sold to a third party
For the first time in months
I have opened the windows
Cherry blossoms pepper the town
Breaking up the sizzling concrete
I am untroubled
I lay my head on the windowsill
And listen to the radio
Watching cars drive into the distance
City life feels far away
But it’s hot in the city, hot in the city tonight
Tonight
All doors are open
Housemates are smoking, laughing, cooing at kittens
My feet are tickled by the breeze
I remember previous summers
Neon lights in Shibuya
Tube station swelter
Empty hotel halls and stairwells
The balcony watching over a fairground back in the 1980s
Daisies closing their petals
All different but all here
Is this what home feels like?
A journey to this point