Your skin is scented, clean and cool
I know I’m meant to be at school
Not on this ordinary odyssey
Years before our lives unspool
On the 31 to Chalk Farm
My arm is grazing your arm
No sign of what you’d decide to do
There’s little cause for alarm
This is what we’re doing this for:
The route starts from our front door
I begged to ride from World’s End and back
(The 31 doesn’t do this any more)
I long to tell them on the bus
That it’s just the two of us
That I have my mother to myself
I can’t recall what we discuss
We eat, you buy me a silken cap
From the window the clouds are a map
As we begin the journey home
With my head resting in your lap
I don’t properly see London scrolling by
The bus tartan imprints upon my thigh
My heart revels in our proximity
It’s fifteen years until you die
Jemima Laing 