Suburban street (Photo credit: Andy Polaine)

I am drawn out on this rack
Spread like withered newspaper
crackling and brown; I have hungered
beyond earthly recognition for a moment
of almost predatory peace

Sweet skeleton irradiates unspoken
crimes; days long ago during
summer’s idyll, where we ran
and played foolish, complex games
before the sun retreated to the
sepulchral realm of the moon

So little known then of the damage
that time can demand, of the results
of momentary thoughts and promises made
with no intention to be kept. We believed
fervently in the newness of each day, wiping all
the past away like erasing memory from
a schoolboard marked with chalk

One simple lie taken out of context,
out of its confined form and spread
like wildfire ruthless across a drought savaged
land; to this day haunts me
with arch accusation and I am undone

Childhood is not innocent, not really
It is imagination in full flight heedless
of consequence or even knowledge that one choice
follows another, like a ghost down a forgotten
alleyway. These battles, these petty skirmishes
thought so little of then, yet still they form us,
immutable, like a potter casts in clay

I learned to lie in those days
Imperfect stories embellished and told with
brave abandon, coloured by winter’s veil
or the elasticity of spring and youth, and I
am guilty of one thing more than any other, that
I have not unlearned this, even to today

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved