By Anna Royle- Creative Writing Editor
I wanted your blue iPod nano
and the diamond studded cover
that you got for Christmas
so badly, that for a small second
I considered
slipping it up my sleeve as I left your room,
after an evening of improving
the dances we watched on the TV,
performing them for your mum
as she smoked with an icy glass of wine,
laughing,
interrupting us
panting,
to check the oven chips;
a little too crispy
with chicken nuggets.
We begged for me to stay over
and play in your garden until nine o’clock—
your jeans on my legs
scraping again the wet grass
and getting soggy from the swing.
When I serve you coffee at the blocky chain coffee shop
in the middle of a carpark
twelve years later,
I ask how your mum is,
and you say she’s doing okay.
You ask me if I’m going to that reunion,
which we agree is stupid because it was so long ago
and we were so young.
But we might go, and when we text again for the first time,
there’s a trace of the closeness still there—
completely comfortable
in the time taken to reply
or lack thereof—
like never forgetting
how to ride
the muddy banks of your garden,
sitting down on a skateboard
The Gown Online 