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Isla Ure

1996

I'd like to go back to 1996

and listen to Wannabe for the first time (again) 

and feel the same pining to wear platforms and pigtails 

and terrorise posh old men in hotels.


I’d like to sell homemade ice lollies outside my house and 

feel the same sense of pride 

with each clink of a coin

instead of the doubt-tinged pride of adulthood.


I'd like to look at that girl and tell her:

people (boys) are going to ask things (sex) of you

and I want you to know that 

You can say No.


I'd like to run along piers and leap 

weightless into the sea, just one more time

true abandon

without fear or self-consciousness.


I'd like to go back to a time 

before mortality was a thing.

Such a sharp coming-of-age

to realise that loving would one day become pain.


I'd like to remember not even considering what I looked like 

day to day, when bin bags of hand-me-downs 

were like Christmas, not

a sign of how broke we were.


Let me tell you:

I worked those corduroy trousers

before and after they were a thing.


I’d like to laugh so hard

just a little bit of wee comes out

and then not even remember what was funny.


I’d really like to build a fucking marble run

and a den.


If I could, I would tell myself:

You are honestly one of the coolest kids I've ever known.


And when she asks me,

you know this grown-up thing?


Is it everything it’s cracked up to be?

I'd turn to her, smile, and say …


   Kid, you'll find out one day.

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