Grow Up

Draw your house in crayon triangles and squares.
Build it with cereal boxes and photos of family members.
Write misspelt lines about your hometown
Until you learn where it is you come from.

Etch your name on lampposts and fences.
Make your teenage mark wherever you can.
Ragged belief in the rubbishness of this place
That is yours, full of familiar streets.

Tear out the annals that document your existence.
Crush your past and scratch out your name.
Home is a container for the young,
And you can be contained no more.

Go back and rebuild those paper dreams.
Cover up with old memories rewritten.
This town is not your town any longer,
But you keep its picture in the back of a drawer.