The first memory I retain,

not the ones handed down to me in black and white,

of going missing as my mother and nan

were shopping in Abingdon

and after going spare and wondering

how they were going to break the news

to my father, only to find me

giggling away to myself in the coal shed

that joined the house, having apparently walked

home alone…

…the memory I have that still hurts in my mind,

that has seared so much into the very fabric