Heaven by Steve Head

Twelv-ish fix you, hooded,

through a grubby picture window

cocky, streetlit, pinching rollie puffs

like Scalextric rev-starts.

You were gone most nights,

lick of baccy on the pindrop landing

spray can rattle, gawky slink

up the garden path. I'm smitten,

infant acolyte, in thrall

to your nineties cool -

cig on the ear, ironic Nike -

how you play without the cheat codes.

The way you never quite

seemed to fit the space

to which you’d been assigned.

When I was old enough to know

you said there was a place in the park

the estate boys all called Heaven,

sunken storm drain stashed

inside the trees, where they lay

huffing marker pens, melting

smiles into their fingers,

doing all they could to feel anything

more than ex-suburban numb.

In absentia, it turned legend;

young life waypoint, teenage airlock,

hallowed chapel of mile-high drift.

I looked for Heaven, when shit went south,

but the town had filled it in.

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Steve Head is a poet and novelist from the leafy dullness of the London suburbs. He started writing poetry in an attempt to decrypt the unfathomable weirdness of adolescence and continued when he realised that it made him appear somewhat cooler than he actually is. Steve is currently based in Paris. Twitter: @stevewrites3