Poetry From The Back Of My Hand

I sat and waited at the bus stop until the bus had gone around the corner and it was safe to cross the street. My gran always taught me never to cross the road until the last car past the corner if I were ever to feel it neccessary to break the traffic code, which she thought very unlikely. It was a busy road and lay just outside my school. 

She used to joke that it used to bring the devil to the door, which was me if I had had candy after school and before the supper she so often prepared. We knew two things 1) that buses bought on deveils if gotten on without reason and a preprepared explanantion as to where we were going, designed of course to prevent us getting on the bus and “running away like a kangaroo. She loved to joke about it; us all running away and moving out to the jungle. She would tell us about the monkey we would have tea with and the ottos we would greet on  our way in. I became fixated om meeting Mowgli and baking him a cake. She would bring everything alive; the stools we sat on, the plates we used. It was like Disneyland but better. 2) The second thing we knew was that the devil rose in us after we failed one of her various experiments she made up for us. She was very religious and spoke about the devil a lot. She also spoke a lot about the prodigal son and Adam and Eve. It grew in us a deep sense of Catholism and the few times we did fail the experiments she was there Bible in hand , prodigal son at the ready to explain that it was ok, and provide the reassurance that yes she still loved us. The experiments were the coolest way to learn. At the beginning of each day she would hand us out a sheet that was divided into four equal parts; thesis, which was the aim or belief held on anything from fruit to sweat, method, what we did to answer the question; apparatus; what we used and the conclusion; what we found out about the chosen subject. My favourite one was the one on food. The aim was to discover what would happen if we ate lots of candy after school. The method ; us binging on candy, the apparatus, a whole bag of penny sweets and a mars bar. We always tried to fail the experiment, and when we did we found the conclusin to be that we shouln’t. We had less energy to play and run, felt weaker and argued a lot more among ourselves,as we experienced a high that quickly made us feel a terrible low.

The rule on how to handle traffic was made very clear, you stay away from cars unless family is in them, which wasn’t very likely as neither of my parents drove and my grandparents were “too old” they said to be fidgeting with modern technology. They preferred the horse and carriage; the one that drove around hidepark. They had never experienced the drive and it was nearing Valentine’s and the race to make the best card was already on in Zara’s class. Chloe normally won, but this time she had lost interest. She was more interested in receiving it.

Chloe sat upright on her bed and looked at the card she had made. It was of a penguin with large hearts at the centre of its body. The penguin had red hearts, yellow hearts, pink hearts and green hearts. She added dear mum on the front and wrote a little message on the inside about how much she appreciated her. It went a little bit like this; dear mum, I couldnt but couldnt do anything without you. You tell me what to eat so I don’t get pimples and buy me my clothes.

It was seven o’clock and she still had not done her presentation. It was due on Monday and it was on frogs, it was already Tuesday and she hadn’t even gotten a book out of the library. As she reached the library she pulled at her top and tucked it beneath her skirt. The  material stretched in a way that showed the curve of the bust that she was developing. “Hey Miguel” she said as she reached the section on animals. “Hey” he replied as he passes her a book on frogs. “Guess what, I might be taking a frog to school for my presentation.”

“Really? That sounds great. Where are you going to get a frog from.”

“I’m not sure really. I ‘m bound to find one though, don’t you think.”

“Sure thing.”

However the day of her presentation came sooner than she had imagined and she was still gluing on pictures of frogs on the large sheets of paper that she would hand out when she realised that she had still not found a frog. She asked her mum for her to buy one for her, then begged her dad and when questions arose as to how much a frog actually cost and what she would actually do to the frog once the presentation was over she had no answers. All she could do was sigh and put her hands on her hips.

The day of her presentation arrived and she still did not have a frog all she had was an emty jar that she had hoped would contain a tiny being in it by then. As she set of for school she carried the jar in the hope that a frog might magically appear in it or that her parents might feel sorry for her plight enough for them to correct their error. She strode up to her older sister in the playground and cryed in her arms saying “they’ll know we didn’t have enough money for the frog”and “i’ve been telling them all week that I would bring one in.” Her friends saw her crying and asked her what was wrong while she hugged her sister. She turned around and told them the truth outright and asked them for help. Her sister told her to just say the truth and to still show the jar in the presentation. She yanked herself from her sister’s arms and wiped her tears and smiled. “No” she said, “I am going to lie. I am going to say that I brought one in and it ran away, that I left my locker door open and that is why I am upset otherwise they’ll think I am upset. Otherwise they’ll think I am a baby.” Howeever her turn for the presentation soon came up and she couldn’t bring herself to lie. All she said in her presentation was that she had wanted to bring in a frog but had thought it inhumane for her to buy one. She added as a side note that she was deeply regretful in the way adults do after incidents that are reported in crimewatch. She started crying as she said this and had to be taken out. She explained what happened as her friend Reema’s little sister past. 

It was later at lunch that the rumours started. Girls saw frogs bouncing out of the toilet ans some had the misfortune of going to the toilet to have one frog jump out at them. It was then that she knew what Reema’ sister and hers had done for her and she proudly looked in the mirror at her green uniform and wished that she could wear it forever.