Our fingernails were always packed
With dirt that summer:
Thick black lines
Through chipped fluorescent paint
Taken from our mothers' vanity cases,
Poorly applied to our skin.

Your lurid eye shadow through pinkish
Shades of the cling-film circle
From your lips. My stubbornly
Vibrant green plimsolls dulled
By the cleavage of your big and second
Toe - peeping through supple Italian leather.

We stood beneath the sepia sky,
Cracking with current.
Our cotton t-shirts patterned with sweat
Matching the sticky stains
On the denim, which lay
Just below our thighs.

Blood oozed down our Woolworths virgin
Socks: the pattern no longer stretched
Out over skin to raw knees.
Elastic had relaxed, they rolled down
Our calves - caked in dried mud
From avoiding the monotony of CITV.

I stood there giggling
At the smears of gum across
Your nose and cheeks: trapping
Strawberry hairs that escaped copious
Layers of lacquer.
The sky split, and belched out liquid.

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