"Write what you did in the summer,"
Said the teacher, vapid smile
Sitting lazily on chin.
She took a thick, grey-coloured file
From out a drawer and opened it,
The cue for kids to start to write.
Chihiro picked a pencil up
And screwed her eyes up very tight.
"Now what did I do in the summer?"
.
Pigs.
A boiler.
Heavy rain...
A gust of wind.
A town. A train.
.
"No - something else," Chihiro thought.
She sighed and tapped her pencil twice.
.
"We should have brought a picnic, dear."
"Chihiro! Try this food! It's nice!"
.
She bit into the pencil wood and sucked
And thought a minute more.
.
The bricks that looked like houses
On a mossy-entranced forest floor.
A rushing gushing river
Where there'd only been a tiny stream.
A frog of stone. A flight of steps.
A bathhouse full of clouds of steam.
.
"There must be more. There must be more," she thought,
"Now think! Now concentrate!"
.
A pile of golden nuggets.
Rowing.
Crying after rice she ate.
An awkward elevator ride
And feeling vulnerable and trapped.
A desperate, stupid dash
Across a rusty iron pole that snapped.
.
"There's something I'm forgetting!"
Thought Chihiro, pacing in her head.
.
Ming vases and a door-knocker.
A living friend she'd thought was dead.
.
"A friend? I had a friend?"
Chihiro frowned.
"But I thought Remi left..."
.
"My flowers! Mum! They're dying!"
Worms.
A door.
A medicine.
A theft.
A lamp.
A rat.
A flea.
A cloak all-black, a mouth, a face-less mask.
A spinning wheel.
A most important, monumental, complex, all-consuming task...
.
Chihiro, thinking rapid, slumped
Into a reminiscent trance.
.
A bike pulled from the river mud.
A man obsessed with gold.
A dance.
"His butt keeps getting bigger
So there's plenty more to kiss!"
A room of food and vomit.
Pigs.
"I must be dreaming this!"
White origami birds.
A chase.
A fear of eating.
Flying. Shoes.
A smell that made her shiver
Herbal water.
Pigs. A test.
"Now choose!"
.
"Five minutes!" called the teacher.
"Finish writing, kids, then go."
Chihiro sat up straighter.
.
"Please employ me!"
Laughing.
"No."
A bridge.
A street of restaurants.
A laugh. "We'll eat before we pay."
A contract and a name.
"Don't breathe."
A map.
Her very first bouquet.
A frog.
A scary lady.
Tug-of-war whilst very, very wet.
A roasted newt.
A token.
Grass.
A train.
A boy.
"I won't forget."
.
She thought at least a minute
For a memory to put.
She chewed her pencil thoughtfully
Swung absently a foot.
A starting of a paragraph
Discarded. She rewrote.
A scratch through 'In the tunnel-'
And a scratch through 'Then a boat-'
A second sheet of paper and about as much success.
A third; all neatly ordered lines a crosshatch, leaden mess.
A fourth; a doodled picture of her father's speeding car.
A fifth; a made-up paragraph on 'working at a spa'.
Two minutes left.
The teacher looked up, mildly disapproving.
Chihiro grabbed another piece and scribbled quickly,
'We were moving.'
(It didn't seem quite adequate. She couldn't think of why...
But lunch was next and, anyway, her mum had packed pork pie.)