I feel their heaviness, they ripple when I jig them.

The muscles of a boxer, a tiny waist, enviable,

round buttocks so hard they slip when pinched.

I spread her thighs, she goes pink, they are smooth,

thick brown hair covers her juicy pussy. Ruff! Ruff!

His penis grows, I find the tip and circle it,

his hardness feels so strong I almost fear it.

Her mouth is fresh and shy, my tongue pokes about.

I want my stick in there, to be lollipopped.

He runs his long fingers through me. I gasp.

Is it wrong to enjoy this? I feel so embarrassed.

I gather the folds on her spine as I massage her back.

She is all flesh, comforting. I drown in her.

His stomach is so flat, he can’t possibly eat enough.

He leads me back to his thing, I stroke it like a cat.

I chew and pull her nipples as if to drink from them.

They flop on my face, I want to gobble them up.

He grabs my buttocks as if kneading dough,

then takes my breasts as if milking a cow.

I can’t wait, I must plunge into her immediately,

I put it in while kissing her so she is distracted.

My cry is muffled by his tongue but he is gentle lion,

he fills my inner walls and sweat pours off him.

I scream out once, twice, thrice, then explode.

I imagine all those babies inside me. I love him.

Eltham, London, 1962

LARA

I SHOT into creation as sperm from my father’s penis,

slept in my mother’s womb for eight months and ten days

then slid out her dilated hole as if on a muddy slide.

My entry to this island was messy, impatient and dramatic.

I was born May twenty-eight, the year Nineteen Sixty-two,

when England was fast asleep and the moon rose,

a luminescent sickle in a sky of heaving indigo waves;

when a gloved hand smacked my wrinkled bum I bawled

air into activated lungs, grieving the sea I’d left behind.

They named me Omolara ‘the family are like water’,

and my crumpled mother wept joy at my perfection

for amid all the soup, snot and chord I was proportioned:

two arms, legs, eyes, one nose, ten fingers and toes.

My frayed father expelled smoke on the quiet landing

while the midwife mopped my dishevelled mother.

Juliana, Ginevra and Quentin, my siblings three, snoozed

in pastel cots upstairs, innocent of my determined arrival.

I entered this world with everything, nothing, and as one

who feels watched every second, every minute, every hour.

I GOT two big googly eyes an’ tufty hair

an’ I a fat little sugar-sweetie-honey-bunch.

‘Honeybunch!’ my mammy gurgles, an’ then she

squeezes my cheeks. ‘Look, just like two cushions’,

an’ I laugh ’cos I like my mammy to play with me.

My big sister Juliana bounces me on her knee,

‘Lara, you’re my best doll, you know.’ She holds