Friday Night
by and published in Edition Nine of Pomegranate
Your White Zinfandel bottle stands empty,
A beacon of hope surrounded by chocolate wrappers,
And the remains of a M and S carrot cake,
That was nowhere near as delicious as the one
Dad used to make you for your birthday.
You recline on your new leather sofa,
And read about celebrities as if they were old friends,
Imagine yourself at that wedding top to toe in Chanel,
While you smile and exclaim, What? This old thing!
Your cupboards are oozing with frothy dresses,
And denim jackets with the tags still on, winking
Like an embarrassing secret, your vision of the new
Young, boho, twenty years younger you.
When you bump into Him at the checkout in Waitrose,
His heart would thump to the bleeps,
He’d drop his skimmed milk, fall to his knees,
And stare at you in goggle eyed wonderment.
You dream of shedding your skin like a snake,
To reveal shimmering skin that doesn’t blush
When your body spills over two train seats,
And when Sam and Michael ask you not to
Come to their sports day.
You remember yourself as a little girl,
When you made butterflies with Dad before bed time,
Amazed as he folded the white paper in two,
Drew half a butterfly and when he cut it out,
He spread its wings and it was whole.
You used to watch them dance from your ceiling,
Wishing you weren’t a caterpillar anymore.
Hannah Tuson
Hannah Tuson, 22. Hannah has a 2.1 in English Literature from the University of Sheffield. She spends a lot of time in the Saison Poetry Library and regularly attends Spoken Word nights. She loves crackly black and white films and is currently trying her hand at fashion illustration.