Summer in the 1990’s
Sunset. Mid-July with a cloudless blue
sky electric pink and flared with gold
The window frame of the caravan digs
into my elbows
I lean out further
My best friend squashed against me
Side by side
Watching our dads sitting in brown and
yellow-flowered deck chairs sipping beer out of clear plastic cups and smoking
rollies that burned our noses and made us cough.
Later we ran between the caravans whilst
the sun burned up the whole world, a brilliant orange
flash,
flash,
faster,
faster,
between each caravan
Blinding us until we stopped
Breathless, heartbeats louder in our
ears than the cries of the seagulls
we sat in the dust on the kerb by the
side of the road
The pavement still hot, the gravel hard
and we sat pulling dead grass from the
cracks and flicking it into the road
And made up nicknames for passers-by,
Like “beachballs”, the woman with the
big boobs
We sat and played games until it was
almost too dark to see
We stood in line at the big white
trailer that made the air smell sweet and burnt and salty and good
We bought hot dogs that burned our
mouths and dropped fat and ketchup down our chins and wrists,
we ate candy floss that caught at our
hair and coaxed the lazy evening wasps and those hard red candy lollipop
dummies in clear cellophane that crackle and we paid with sticky coins from the
pockets of jeans we’d worn for two weeks straight.
Then, with our backs to the stars, we
pushed grubby fingers between the cracks in the white tarpaulin tent
and watched red-faced women and men with
beer bellies smoke and drink and sway to a woman with short red hair singing
I’m
walking on Sunshine
until her voice was gone.
Natascha Graham
I am a lesbian writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and non-fiction. My work has been previously selected by Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival and has been published in Acumen, Rattle, Litro, The Sheepshead Review, Every Day Fiction, Yahoo News and The Mighty to name but a few.