The hardest kid in school
sat with bins in corners,
invisible as chewing gum,
his arms changing colour;
indigo to violet;
his xylophone ribs
practising hollow melodies
and his school tie choking
as he’s flipped
down pinball corridors.
He spent lunch-breaks
holding breath in cubicles,
reading books on space and insects,
soles pressed to the half-hung door
and when the last bell tolled
he sprang: a cat from a box,
vanishing down alleyways
inside a tug-torn blazer
to hide in a room
behind comic book heroes.
You asked me who the hardest kid in school was.
After studying creative writing at the Open University, Dan Stathers was awarded the William Hunter Sharpe Memorial Scholarship by The University of Edinburgh (for poetry). He occasionally blogs at grumpyaphid.wordpress.com.