Inspired by Amy

It was an oldies’ party up in the hills,
not that she minded befriending the lot!
So she went up the poets’ roads
too late for her liking, too early for her age,
with enough trauma behind to fight anyone off.

A shrewd but kind-hearted Artemis she had turned
from the precocious owlish Athena that she was.
The girl who loved Sam Heughan, understood every Stephen Hawking,
despite a mum who yelled while raising her
finger to her lips, “SH, SH, loge kya sochenge!”

She found a place to sing her old Celtic tunes
in the village square. While reading quietly at home,
evading mum’s unconditional wrath and uni’s bureaucratic delays...
Until she could swoop back down to the world, and fly free
as the Gooseberry birds trapped uphill yet uncaring of it.

For in her grief, she bargained the rest of her life
For even just one day when two smiles would beam upon her -
One over her shoulder like the sun on her face;
and the other a little one in the crook of her arm,
that slipped inside her heart.