Just Kids

Remember when we were just kids, When we shared a bath and a bedroom, When we used to play outside, On tinsel-decked scooters we’d zoom. The back garden with the sandpit and swing, The slide that gave us electric shocks, The plastic kitchen and toy washing machine, The photo of you sat in its cardboard box. Polishing wooden chairs before family arrived, Hoping they would slip and slide off, Magic cream for grazes and sickly Calpol If you had a headache or cough. The pink Barbie car and remote-controlled jeep, Microphones and Winnie-the-Pooh drum, And plastic blue drumsticks we hit each other with That got hidden in a high place by Mum. The time when you pooed on my toy rabbit, The time I threw sand in your eye, The times we brought all our toys downstairs Without really knowing why… Just hating those dreaded words: “tidy up”, Suddenly too tired to move or hear; Your name scrawled on the wall in pencil, Which you denied writing with a strop and a tear. Knock-knock jokes without punch-lines, Games with no reason or rhyme; Looking at the grey world of growing up, I wish we could go back to that time.