Things I thought I missed

Sleeping over at your house
Overheated in my all in one
The heat all rose to the top
So, I slept in my vest
And I didnʼt cry this time.
Neither did She
As her phone slipped through the bannister
Six steps down on newly varnished stairs.
Guess I
Never stopped being scared of your gate
Or your mam
Your aunts
Your gran
Vol-au-vents with ham and mushroom and cream
Went cold. Rumours and lies told
About them and never us
A second family if I ever had
One too many mars bars and
Sweat stinking teens crammed onto
Futons and double beds
Where dust riddled every filigree detail of
Mattress spreads, and put my full weight
On the protruding spine of my best friend.
At the time, for us those
Lines were always blurred but
Nothing occurred, hating each other
And never saying a word.
And looking back I thought I had missed it all.
The wild romances,
The stubbornness and flames that burnt us out.
But these shaking passing moments,
And our long forgotten screams of fury
And crashing unfiltered happiness.
Captured on a now destitute machine.
Seem to say that
Maybe it was not all in vain.
Any deep chest sobs
Any uncontrollable laughter
Our muscles stretched and pulled and pushed
against each other.
And showed us
What we thought we already knew.
Love and other grown up things.

About the Author

I am from Kilkenny and went to secondary school
in St. Brigid’s in Callan. I’m involved in the drama
society in my college and have an interest in
poetry.

Author's Note on the Poem

I wrote the poem about growing up. I’m at the end of my teenage years now and I was thinking about how it felt like I had missed out on a lot. Then, I found all these old videos of my friends and I, and I realised that my “coming of age” had been happening without me really knowing it.

Editor's Note

That strange, transition time at the end of the teenage years is very well explored and captured here, I think. There’s a dreamlike, floating feeling in the way the poet arranges the lines and sentences and dances from one memory to another, almost reminiscent of the way memory mashes itself into often-chaotic montages in our heads – or in a forgotten archive of video-messages from the past. I really like the musical way the poet plays with rhyme and assonance throughout this poem.