Being Fourteen

for Alice

The girls slump, demoralised
at their desks, aching,
through literally endless 
afternoons, for each other's 
brilliance. Uncaged by the bell,
they squeal in ecstatic heps
like piglets seeing off
a cartoon wolf. On Saturdays 
they stand inspecting their hands
on street corners, at a loss
as to left and right. They have
dressed themselves in truths 
from Sylvia, Oscar, Morrissey;
permanent marker, thick
as theatrical blood, down the seams
of their pre-stressed jeans.
They will roam till twilight
on two pounds seventy, brought up
short at shop-fronts, car-windows, 
in lifts and loos, by reflections
harbouring answers to ferocious
questions. They hole up from storms
in trolley parks, packed warm
as new-baked loaves. Dinner
confounds them, and with one blank
look, they turn kid brothers
into glass, stare through them
at distant skinny boys descending
library steps. They shuffle,
wounded, to their rooms, and fall
into bed like dynamited buildings,
burying secrets. Winter nights,
they spoon in starlit fields,
and plot the perfect venue 
for their funerals: Berlin,
Manhattan, Prague. In dreams
they will ransack their mothers'
cast-offs, dressing retro
for their next wild flight
to the future.