for Lucy and rr
On our knees every morning on the parquet,
lines and grooves pressed into flesh
as we held our hands dutifully together
beneath our noses, and recited the Lord's Prayer
give us this day our daily bread...
and forgive us our trespasses.
I looked at the bottle green back of the girl in front,
at the drawing pin embedded in the sole
of her Start-Rite sandal, and longed for objects -
platform shoes, LED watch,
denim skirt, cigarettes - that would ease the craving,
that would ensure membership.
4 comments:
This is wonderful, thank you.
I was thinking about that floor only the other day, but I'd quite forgotten the drawing pins in the shoes. I used to try to pick them up deliberately since they could give a satisfying tap to the gait and a frisson of uncertain slippage on the high-gloss polish.
Membership. Oh yes. And then again, oh no :-)
Indeed, I'm very proud!
Do you remember destarching the boarders' pinnies? I daresay we've talked about it. Though that may have been before LED watches etc. And when you had one you immediately wanted a Snoopy one instead...
Membership. I suppose we all thought each other had it at one time or another and we didn't.
we should have a big memory swap one of these days. i love to think of rr's drawing pin tap-dance, and yes the boarders' pinnies - how entirely weird that they were starched in the first place.
How entirely weird indeed that we even wore pinnies... Actually I kind of liked them.
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