The Time We Met 

Coming from where we came,

We’d seen a thing or two,

Could give a thing its name.

We’d grown in field and town,

Semi-detached from the playgrounds

Through which our playdough personalities

Had so far been squeezed.

We had survived the barbs of adolescence,

Would tease out the thorns.

We were exuberant.

With spliffs and student bank accounts to burn,

We set out, twenty strong,

Rambled down florescent streets,

Reorganising traffic cones and road signs.

We marveled at sound reflected on a domed pub ceiling;

Catching snippets of other people’s conversations,

We drank to our omnipotence,

And deftly ignored our ignorance.

We’d learnt new words and wanted to use them,

Like teleological, spectrographic, djuvet and blup.

We dragged ourselves, bleary eyed to seminar and lecture,

We quoted, extrapolated, deduced and conversed,

We spoke with authority on subjects diverse,

Over “ities” and “isms” we’d argue and curse,

Hated to back down and exchanged harsh words,

That were soon forgotten

Amid the hangovers we’d nurse.

We gleefully jumped into one another’s skins,

And bounded to music recently made our own.

We watched new favourite films,

Scoured art for significance,

Ate and learnt how to cook -

Cue Andy, he wrote us the book.

We swapped clothes and opinions,

And borrowing authors,

We frantically tattooed ourselves, with each other’s passions.

We binged on naivety,

Said things that might now make us cringe,

But we were open,

And listened to life stories with earnest ears.

Identifying and truth defying,

We stacked experiences with our own,

Played Jenga in the kitchen sink,

And laughed with delight,

To toss a coin into an unguarded drink.

We were maturing fast;

Half obeyed cleaning rotas,

And realised all the lies they told us at school.

We dropped childish prejudice;

Talked to strangers, read newspapers, accepted vegetables,

And felt pretty grown up about it.

We paid bills and insulted landlords,

Destroyed the house, but cleaned up afterwards.

We heard the thundering hooves of deadlines,

And ate biscuits -

Got jobs to pay for taste the difference.

We approached problems with reason and clarity:

How to hide a stain, get an extension?

How to film the girls and their girls only party?

Awoke from a long night,

To find we’d borrowed a board room door.

Scratched our heads, fashioned a table

And played ping pong forevermore.

In quiet moments, we looked back to where we started.

Had charged blindly down roads now clearly marked,

To arrive here. With coins tossed and decisions near,

We thought of our futures and flipped between ideas.

Paths branching out to potential failure,

If we walked up one could we walk up another?

The old adage guided those who knew it -

You can do most anything, if you put your mind to it.

Only first you had to work out what to do,

Who to be and how to go about your business.

From one another we got different views,

Got courage, love, trust and forgiveness.

Got calm words when we couldn’t think straight,

Leant on each other and saw the marks we make.

Felt hands on shoulders,

Over which we watched as we painted each other’s portraits.

Watched them grow and shimmer,

As we proudly hung them by our mirrors.