The World According to a Child Soldier

 
 
In a well-typed-bold letter, with very little spelling mistakes,
the headmaster invited my father to a political chat.
 
This morning, I turned up in assembly bare feet,
with a red notebook.
At half past nine I escaped through a window
during the weekly fire drill and
someone noticed me drawing a swastika on the toilet door.
It was the only detail I could remember
from the history lessons up to that point.
 
I spent the entire day up on a hill,
editing my own handwritten freedom-pamphlet,
in the company of a shepherd and his dog.
 
It rained at about three o’clock and the world smelled of people.
It smelled of my father in navy-blue overalls, pacing up and down
in the quiet corner of the school library.
 
At night, I coughed and spat out a nuclear war,
a big lump of poetry stuck in my throat;
from a hospital bed, still in recovery.