Jimmy Smash
We’d
wait for you after school,
save
you a seat on the bus.
You’d
always come and sit with us.
Probably
at first you thought we
were
your friends. You went home
and
told your mum you’d met
some
new mates. Sometimes
we’d
wait for you at the gates, and do
that
thing where you kick the back of
someone’s
knees, making them buckle.
We’d
laugh at the way you said owww!
and
you’d laugh too. You must have
realised,
after a while, that we
were
not in this for friendship.
When you
came to fill that empty seat
with
your cheeks as fresh
as
virgin snow and your eyes
like
targets, we’d stamp on your face
with
our own insecurities.
Our
jibes were fragile arrows.
You
weren’t to know this, of course.
You
stuck around for over a year,
playing
the jester to our clique of kings.
At the
time we told ourselves that you
didn’t
mind, that it was all a bit of fun.
The
other day, my mum ran into yours
at
Sainsbury’s. I’ve since found out
that
you used to cry into your pillow
every
day after school. It took years
of
therapy to wipe the footprints clean.
And for
what it’s worth, I broke my bow
and my
feet are still full of blisters.
