Leaving Peter
by and published in Edition Four of Pomegranate
As my feet fell,
as the holes in my slippers
became rock and stabbed me – as the girls with better hair than me
and bodies made of mirrors
laughed behind their combs,
and my eyes stung almost out of their sockets
with pain and salt – in the flash of a cutlass
I realised something: that I would rather
push prams round Regent’s Park
for decades, saved and sad and dull
than let the water climb up
that rock; that I would give the world but not my life to stay. The kite-tail burnt my hands, what else is there to say, I loved you, I grew up.
Colette Sensier
Colette Sensier is 19 years old, originally from Sussex but currently in the first year of an English degree at King’s College, Cambridge. She has been a winner in the Foyle, Tower Poetry, and Peterloo prizes for young people at various times since 2005.