My Favourite Coat
It was never mine — a seventies Afghan,
with its heavy red and yellow stitching
and tendrils of fleece I yearned to twist —
if I could only twirl
into the girl whose coat it was —
freed from school to loiter outside the tube
on a wet winter afternoon.
Her hair still straight in the rain
she wore the arm of a boy
across her shoulders as if it was nothing,
pulling Silk Cut and a pink zippo lighter
like a magician conjuring fire.
Juliet Humphreys has had poems published in a variety of magazines including The Rialto, The North, Acumen and Orbis.