Poetry

Hold your own hand

Usually they try to talk about serotonin or avoidance tactics
but I am master of conversation and steer us towards
the stupidity of phonics testing or recipes for banana bread.
Sometimes they offer a fairy-tale reading of my behaviours,
I think the armour is meant to be a metaphor implying that
the weight on my chest is to do with self-expectation.
I am not taking the situation seriously enough when I say
that as a woman I would never have been allowed into battle.
I am really just waiting for impatience to froth from their mouths like the water did
that time I was so thirsty that I drank from the basin in the church toilets.
We don’t doubt what we know to be true.
An egg is an egg. 63 is a bad mark. I am not ill.
We decide to leave it there for today and I know what this really means.
I can return to radio four and the rhythm of bouncing a tennis ball on my racket;
they say this is about the sleeplessness that papers my walls
but actually, it’s just good for hand-eye coordination. 

Matilda Webb