Wasted youth

When you were clear-eyed
When your breasts burst out of you like blossoms
Your legs brown willow wands
Your hair like golden fire
You determined to be strange
Wore bad 80s tracksuits
Hair in a low ponytail tied with a scrunchie
Frumpy centre part and frizz, a frown
Under thick eyebrows
Wore old man pants
Hacked off your hair
Grew it back without grooming
Went to the ball in jandals and your grandma’s dress
Smelling like dust
Wore no bra and your mum’s old skivvy
Ate cake in the street
Made homemade dreadlocks
That stunk of skin and rotting thread
Went swimming in baggy boyleg trunks
Wore old sneakers from a skip bin
Smoked weed out of toilet rolls, apples,
plastic bottles, bits of bamboo
Threw all your costume jewellery in the clothing bin
Bought a pair of heels and never wore them
Gave them to the opshop
Slept with stoners, drunks, deadbeats and layabouts
Tried to get jobs in bare feet
Threw out everything made of leather
Wore thai fisherman pants and no undies
Refused to shave anything
Hacked your hair off again
Wore a bad 80s jacket
Dyed it patchy pink with DYLON cold
Cut your own bangs crooked
Got paint all over yourself
Wore clown pants
Carried everything in a dirty backpack
No spare change no time of day
Get lost, fuck off, nothing to see here
Like a tree dropping fruit
On the pavers of an abandoned courtyard

Airini Beautrais

Airini Beautrais lives in Whanganui and is the author of four poetry collections and a collection of short fiction. Her most recent poetry collection is Flow: Whanganui River Poems (VUP 2017). Bug Week and Other Stories recently won the Ockham NZ Book Fiction Award 2021.