Autobiography
I only remember our neighbour’s wind chimes,
Rosie and Jim,
and my first lie.
There was a tree house in the garden,
blue and white checked summer dresses,
a silent dinner table.
My mother’s soft fingers on my forehead said
don’t forget your piano practice.
Wetness in my trousers,
sips of my father’s bitter,
an ice skate in my brother’s knee.
We had a Ford Focus,
the World Wide Web,
an hour of TV a day,
three funerals,
no weddings,
tower block scenery,
B grades
and Lymphoma,
printed on a white form.
Soon, the smell of petrol and smoke
replaced talcum powder and chlorine.
Textbooks piled up,
Smirnoff Ice spilled out,
a patch of black hair dye stained the sink.
Then came
my father’s tears,
my mother’s phone voice,
damp tents and singed clothes,
a plastic cup of gin to lose my virginity with,
the screech of seagulls
and lined paper,
sheets and sheets of it,
waiting.
Faye Ivory began writing as a young teenager to still the velocity of her world. Since then she has studied Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and now writes purely with the hope of moving someone in some way.