Kids at the house with the fancy curtains
Sometimes we think we hear
their laughter clambering over
the back yard’s seven foot fence,
while we chuck boredom at the opposite kerb
and catch it bouncing back again.
The day Patrick slid his BMX
under the 17 bus and Joseph
got grounded for nicking
two quid out his dad’s beer money,
we knocked on their door
cos we didn’t have enough players
for our rounders teams.
Their mam took one look
at our undone laces, faces tanned
on second-hand nicotine,
told us they were poorly,
even as the vertical gaps
between white fence slats
filled with two small black silhouettes.
Debbie Hudson
Debbie Hudson is a writer from West Yorkshire, England, whose work focuses on the working-class northern experience, often through a queer lens. Her short fiction and poetry has previously appeared in The Belfast Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Riggwelter, Isele Magazine and Bandit Fiction, among other places. When not writing, you’ll probably find her shoving her face into a cat—any cat, not just her own cat—and then complaining that it’s set off her allergy.
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