At swimming once,
I went to turn from front to back
and just kept turning,
just kept turning,
turning over,
over and over,
till the swimming teacher said,

Billy chased me round the playground
with hands full of fists

Billy yelled at me across the football pitch
with a mouth full of stings.

The walls of the room are white and clean -
all sign's of yesterdays sorrows scrubbed
away with bleach.

Miss Flotsam was my reception teacher.
She had travelled the world.
Brown hair turned golden
under distant suns,
clothes carrying colours

I was born with a map of Australia on my face;
it was beautiful, my mother told me – 
there was nobody like me in the whole wide world
who could trace the edges of down under

Toothless, she kisses
with fleshy lips
rounded, like mouth
of a bottle, all wet

She bruises your face
almost, with two
loving tree-root hands.