Tim Kitchin - Stairs

We are no longer children, sitting on the stairs,
knowing too much and too little.
Feeling the punch of whispered glares.
and talk growing brittle.

Dizzy from the dares.
Ip Dip, feeling like shit,
glow-worms lit by playground flares;
baboons that cannot sit.

The pavlovian squeal of a sofa spring,
still sends us up the wooden hill.
Could be Dad's ghostly gullet retching to the sink,
or just Mum's memory, after all, blistering a pill.

Your mask slips in the halflight.
I laugh. You don't.

You're right.

Tim Kitchin

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/stairs-9/