Eternal Youth At My Mother's

Eternal Youth At My Mother’s 

In the bedroom of my childhood home I fall, I fail, I flail
In fitful draughts of sleep
Wind howling to a whistle
As it sharpens itself
On eaves and chimney corners
Long forgotten creaky floorboards and door hinges
Remembered once more
By the angst-ridden teenager
Now almost middle-aged.
The house has hardly changed
80s Buck Rogers wallpaper and all.
Perhaps if I had stayed, I wouldn’t have either.
Downstairs, I hear my mother burrowing
Through her hoard to the kettle in the kitchen
She wakes early these days
Me? I go back to missing exams in my sleep
And turning up to school
With no bottom uniform half
For a final hour before the alarm bell relieves me
Of another shift of nocturnal incompetence.

 ©LS King 2017