strawberry-flavoured balloons

my mother’s drawer is a magpie’s nest.

her restless treasures sizzle under the scant sunlight.

her watchful, furtive, darting eyes. then her hands

slam the drawer shut. she flares at my longing stares.

don’t you touch it or i’ll have your guts for garters.

mummy and daddy are out until noon.

i slip, slither, slide. gleam. swoon.

head plunged into a cold green chest

filled with gold watches that don’t tick

and teardrop-shaped pearls and

my pretty china doll that mum claimed was lost. (hiss.)

there’s a box the size of a Frooti pack.

on the cover’s a handsome man with tousled hair.

a woman with parted lips trails a digit down his

chiselled chest. the picture of a strawberry.

it looks like Dark Fantasy and Fruit-tella had a baby.

the offspring of two forbidden fruits, staring right at me.

fervent fingertips tear through the tin foil

and pull out a pink ringed soft rubber and

taste it. bland. sticky. the raised isometric dots

like goosebumps on my tongue. what is this thing?

grownups have weird toffees. i examine the ring

and think, oh, this is shaped like a balloon.

i blow. it grows. the ring is thick. i draw it out,

and it unravels like a never-ending handkerchief.

long and long and long until it is about as long as

my seven-year-old arm holding it, yet it grows more—

the ring is thick. my patience is thin.

so it’s thrust under the running tap,

swelling under spurting jets of water

straining, stretching, semi-transparent,

the dreamy pink distended, pulled,

lengthened until it looks like

a boob. i lift it, heavy and swashing,

and shoot. it bounces off the geyser and splashes

on the flush tank, knocking over the soap

and foot scrub. the cogs in my head turn.

i tear all the foil wrappers and throw them,

all splashing, from the fifth-floor bedroom,

laughter and condoms ricocheting off the

frangipani trees as the strawberry flavoured balloons

hit the hard concrete

and burst.