Let's Get Real

You say to me I have
no idea of real people’s lives
I blink, wonder where your vision
of me comes from. Clouds.

All my pinched youth
I don’t remember, just shreds of it
come back. The yellowed man who gave
me a foreign chocolate each week
to bring us both luck.

The lady whose ankles swelled
on the plane, like walking on balloons,
flying to her daughter in Canada
twice a year while we went nowhere.

Cabbage smell billowing
from our frog-cave hall
as Dad croaked at me
this was the week he’d win
the pools and I imagined
blue waters, pure air.

I imagined towers of learnt facts
taking me storey by storey
out of this suffocating hell,
tiptoeing away from being nothing
up to where the air was pure
but you're born right, let's get real

I have no idea.