Break Time
Remember the lumber of the teacher’s words
buckling under the bell’s smash. Remember
us kids blocking at the door to get out
a bundle of smells: the nose fuss of jumper wool,
spicy graphite on pencil stained fingers,
our little mouths bursting with hot chat.
On the playground, remember the cram splintering
in a twang of shins, arms ribboning and the cold
snapping as though the air were chalk.
Hurtling over the concrete, remember if you can
tugging at the body’s bonds
from the cake of scalp down to the toe clasps,
every pore and goose bump as Velcro to unhook
and, in that second split like an atom,
your child’s heart becoming
the crack of a whip bound in a school uniform.
But remember also the railings
drawing in like ribs of a corset. All sprints fray.
All bodies slow. Remember the bars’ solid thrum
like a kicked guitar under the rain of our hands.
Mark Pajak was born on the Wirral. He is a graduate of LJMU and also the Liverpool Playhouse Young Writer’s Programme. His work has appeared in Askew, Myths of the Near Future, Smoke and Spilt Milk Magazines, among others.