They walked by.
The decent folk.
Curious fascination
fed their disgust
of us.
Thirteen and fourteen year olds,
condemned,
damned to be digits,
debated statistics
in some university’s data collection.

We sat on creaking swings,
faking bravado.
The cider helped.
Deciphered into dumpy,
plastic bottles.
We had no choice
but to swallow
the shallow hollowness,
watching shadowy demons
of childhood hopes
melt into
the dark of distant,
terraced chimneys.

Delinquent, defiant,
spliff smoking fiends.
We didn’t hold our breath
or dead thoughts
of Dads returning any time soon,
or Mums even noticing.
They were gone. Absent
in the haze of crack pipes
and vodka.

We were just the apprentices,
keeping the swings warm
for the next exhibits
proving to decent folk
how worthy they were
and how much better they lived
under grey, northern skies.