one day soon these days will end.

but for now you are the little monster guilty in the closet

who looks up with hands sticky from the glitter you swallow to colour your throat

to colour your stories.

for now over long telephone calls

you make big plans about things that happened four years ago

and talk excitedly about meeting names you should never have rewound.

for now every day at three o' clock you enter the two-way glass

and spend an hour rocking in front of a little man with hungry eyes

who screams words like "yes!" "electricity!" "mum!" ...no regrets..........

at home you rearrange magnetic poetry to replace "little", "hungry", "screams"

and watch how the story changes.

for now you sit up

silent

in a white nightgown

between sister and sancta maria

silent.

god giggles.

across every third storey pale children do the same.

we wait for the "to be" wonder why it never came.