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Sport 16: Autumn 1996

Part 1

Part 1

The child who’s been told she is a born liar
Has a solemn respect for the truth.
She knows what it is. She goes out on her scooter,
Coasts down the hill to the factory wall.

She stands on her scooter on tallest tip toes.
She grips the rough wall with her fingertips hard
Till it hurts. She can’t reach the window.
Turning around she remembers her friend.

Faith has red hair and lives with her granny.
The woman is old like the little girl’s mum.
Unlike her, she smokes, and will die soon, of cancer.
The little girls played down here one week ago.

The child took her doll in an apple-box pram.
‘This is Mum’s baby,’ she told her friend Faith.
‘You’re a liar,’ said Faith, biting her on the shoulder.
Then the child knew they would not meet again.

Mum had said Faith was ‘illegitimate’.
The child was prepared to be that word too.
Dad lifted her once to see through the window.
A grey-coated man held a pink plastic leg.

‘That’s where they make limbs for soldiers who’ve lost theirs.’
The little girl knows some good uses for lies.
If truth is a thing that’s too hard to look at
A good lie’s a comfort, a smart pair of trousers.