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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