Poetry | We'll Roar Now

There is a deafening roar,

Now that I am grown,

Of lost meanings, lost love:

Their key in the lock, the air

On their coats as they got home

Jumpers as goalposts, smoking

In Costa, the smell of casserole,

It roars in me, his knee-plea cry,

Don’t go, please don’t go!

There was a dog that ran too fast

For me to catch up and made me

Scream its name, heartbroken,

And it never came. The too-small

Blue plates at granny’s, her peas,

My strutting sex on the prom,

With socks in my bra excited

That one day I would be grown.

Then I was a drink-please woman,

A laughing, dreaming child full

Of men and fear and wasted time,

No coat-air, no dog-love screams,

Just a diagnosis of what went wrong.

Here is truth: Life is not mistaken.

Let me rise through you in words,

From beyond this clunky line, like

Earthborn rain falling upwards to a well:

We’ll roar now from eternity anew.