Kissing Out Scrumping
Squabs squatting on treetops, stuck between bide and fly.
How do you know if wings work?
The youth club was a place for the bigguns. Littluns allowed

Thursdays six thirty ’till eight We strode along the spinney path.
You in your tan suede jacket, voice on the croaky cusp of change.
I can’t remember what I wore. It would have been tom-boy.

An old lady stopped to chat. We wondered why she was so proud
to be eighty three. To us it was a tragedy. Our sixpence subs
sat in our pockets. Subs was a bigguns’ word. We felt bigger just saying it.

‘got your subs’?
‘yeah, got mine
‘got your subs’?

We paid our subs and looked around, not moving our heads. To one end,
a giant, baize-covered king held court, humouring two or three littluns
wielding over-sized cues. To the other

a hatch with snacks. Norwegian Wood whined from a record player in the corner.
A biggun and his bird smooched by, his hand fluttering on and off her bum. You turned
your rosacea away.

‘wanna play on the football table’?

Later we bought potato puffs and Vimto. Ergo. Trying to look casual. At eight
we decided to go. On the walk home you asked if we should try a snog.
We’d ridden bikes, scrumped apples. hoola-hooped and knocked up ginger
through every season. I shrugged. ‘Ok’

We lay down in the snapped twig of the spinney like a dry, unwrapped sandwich,
acting out curiosity. Your jacket zip dug into my chin. The kiss, which was two
fledgling mouths briefly planted together, felt wet and alien. To us it was a
biggun kiss. After it we stood up as if we’d just arm-wrestled

A squab floundered frantically on the harsh grey of the path. You scooped it up,
cupping it, pushing it slowly through a hole in the hedge. We clopped down the
spinney steps each in our own thoughts.

‘What was so great about being a biggun’?
‘When do wings work’?

At the bottom we said ‘Bye’, flapping our separate ways,
knowing life had changed forever.