My friends were of the childhood sort:
the ones I had known for a decade,
two-thirds of my life
1 Every good moment, an overdue bill: 0.10
2 “this is nice” 0.50
2 “we should do this again sometime” 1.00
2 “love you” (it’s about time it got paid)
1 Every bad moment, a wasted investment: 1.99
2 I hate this I hate this 1.99
2 I hate this I hate this 2.49
2 I hate them (was it worth the risk?)
* * *
I think I loved you because we didn’t owe each other anything:
every passing smile, lockers to lessons –
every small talk, queueing for bursary lunches –
every walk home, away from red-roofed neighbourhoods and three-car front lawns –
was almost a decision; wasn’t a habit
None of it on loan,
no £1 and 5p coins exchanged in a hurry
no tripping each other up in every conversation, or
catching me out with forgotten favours,
We never asked each other for anything.
So what if you got bored of me? So what if you didn’t like me?
I didn’t owe it to you to keep myself contained:
you didn’t owe it to me to stay.
And you always had somewhere you needed to go anyways,
Always busy,
Always with-purpose,
Always marching around
2 with your second-hand Docs
9 and unread messages,
2 Tapping your Tesco's clubcard
2 a quick in-and-out of the store,
3 Getting groceries, getting work-ex, getting gifts
9 and loyalty points out of it all.
What would you do with my loyalty? What would you do with me?
Me, spending hours with bric-a-bracs in a trail of charity stores,
or lingering in cafes next to places I used to live,
or sleeping in the children's area of
bookshops, libraries, and that one crepe place
with the stuffed animals,
never committing to buying: leaving the table empty instead:
Of course you’d get bored eventually, of course you couldn’t stay –
(i’d like to think you liked me, though.
i’d like to think you wanted to stay.)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We’ve been around for a quarter century now,
and I never left the town we grew up in,
2 And, the Tesco’s still going strong, of course, 1.99
2 And, the charity stores are still short on
volunteers, 2.00
And now I’m waiting for the bus home,
meal-deal in hand, thinking
about loving you again,
thinking about calling, or leaving
a voicemail, a text,
which you could keep unread
But I never asked you (you never owed it
for your number to me anyways)
5 And I still owe my friends (i.e.
2 (the childhood ones) i still owe my friends
1 for all the time they wasted for all the time i wasted
1 hating me hating them.)
I’ll just pay them a visit instead.