I have a stash of old notebooks full of thoughts and scribblings. Some pages hold just odd lines or paragraphs, some poems I have maybe just started and never finished. And some have finished poems that I have long forgotten writing, or have never shown to anyone. I can lose hours reading back through these notebooks. Sometimes I am looking for inspiration – to take a line or a half finished poem and make something of it. But also I get lost in memories. Many of my poems, especially the older ones are really just me putting my feelings down on paper. As I read them I can remember what I was doing when I wrote them, or why I was feeling a certain way. I can also see how I have changed over the years – how as I have grown my perspective has changed and my confidence grown. This poem was written at a period when I was lacking in self confidence and was a bit of a social chameleon.

I twisted myself up

I turned round and round

and got all tangled.

And then I had to unwind myself,

the other way round and round.

And when I fell on my behind

it wasn’t funny;

it hurt.

Even though I deceived you

when I sat there and laughed.

But the tears that rolled

down my reddened cheeks

were not the result of a

burst of hysteria.

My eyes all screwed up,

the tears fell from

sudden pain.