Hold Your Own by Kate Tempest

Tiresias
    Picture the scene:
    A boy of fifteen.
    With the usual dreams
    And the usual routine.
     
    Heading to school with a dullness inside
    Borne of desires left unsatisfied.
     
    Is he stifled or is he just
    Learning the ways of his times?
    Give him limbs that are awkward
    But know how to climb.
     
    Give him a gait that you know.
    Give him hopes.
    His days are so painfully slow,
    But he copes.
     
    This morning
    He wakes to the same old alarm.
    Slumps in the shower
    Like a frog in the rain.
    Winks at the mirror – does cool, does charm.
    Shaves soft skin.
    Nods at the pain.
    No hair yet. Soon though.
     
    Headphones on.
    Last half of last night’s joint in his lips.
    Bass so loud it feels like a movie.
    Scuffing his trainers.
    Swinging his hips.
     
    They’re always laughing,
    The kids at the bus stop.
    He tries to ignore them,
    But it doesn’t help.
     
    Hood up, he walks past them.
    Blowing out smoke rings.
    Singing out Wu-Tang.
    Hating himself.
     
    Into the woods, he takes the old path.
     
    There is the rope swing,
    There is the bath lying broken.
    There is his name in the bark.
    There are the trees,
    So slim and so stark
    In the thin little woodland.
    Hardly a forest,
    The last of the green washed clean by the grey.
    There is the bike chain that nobody wanted,
    There is a child’s shoe
    – hope they’re ok.
     
    Out of the damp leaves and mulch in the pathway
    His eye is caught by a glittering flash.
    A dark moving something,
    A mess of bright muscle.
    Ore in a forge,
    A deep, billowing gash.
     
    Snakes. Two snakes!
    Coiling, uncoiling
    Boiling and cooling
    Oil in a cauldron
    Foil in a river
    Soil on a mood ring.
     
    He stares:
    They spoil each other.
    They do things
    He has only dreamt of doing.
     
    His blood’s alive inside him, fizzing.
    He shuts his eyes and watches blotches
    Underneath his lids for minutes.
    But peeks before he knows he’s peeking.
     
    Clutching his knees, he squats on his haunches
    Watching the scales as they bounce and contort
    And before he has thought he has reached out a fist
    And picked up a short stick that lies near a ditch.
     
    He swings from above
    And breaks open the fortress.
    The snakes, now apart,
    Seem smaller, more awkward.
    They flee for their love.
    The boy, swaying and nauseous
    Falls to the floor
    More raw than before,
    More tortured.
     
    He feels himself shiver, contorting.
    A current is coursing within him,
    Shorting his circuits.
    He curses,
    His curses are perfect
    The trees bow their branches in worship.
     
    His body’s responding to something beyond him.
    Swells where before there were dips.
    A crunching of muscle, the hips
    Opening up, bones roaring,
    Beneath them, boyhood shrinking, falling inwards.
    Thinking nothing.
    Feeling new blood rushing.
     
    Scuffing ankles on the forest floor
    As his shape moves
    His body pours itself to puddles.
    He fits and starts.
    He will be more than the sum of his parts.
    He shakes and shouts, a screwed-up mouth.
    A pain that only women know
    Grabs him in the guts.
    He slows to gently stuttered breaths
     
    He stops.
    He feels.
    He’s still.
    He rests.
     
    And slowly, with caution
    She climbs to her feet.
    Wipes tears from her cheeks with her sleeve.
    Frowns at the trees.
    How could you stay so calm?
    Places a nervous palm
    Against her new face, her new chest,
    The new flesh of her arm.
     
    She approaches the school gates,
    She can’t face her class.
    She can’t go home, not now.
     
    She is glass
    Amongst sand.
     
    She turns and retreats.
    Finds herself deep
    In the smog and the heat,
    The fog and the meat
    Of the bodies that beat out their lives
    In the throb of the street.
    She learns to be small and discreet.
    She learns to be thankful for all that she eats.
    She learns how to smile
    Without meaning an inch of it.
    She learns how to swim in the stink
    And not sink in it.
    It’s as if this is all she has known.
     
    Give her a face that is kind, that belongs
    To a woman you know
    Who is strong
    And believes