At Ten

I didn’t know what decade meant
the year I turned ten. The year
I turned ten, we moved houses
and went from two rooms on an
upper floor to three rooms on
the ground. I had only just learned
what one’s own house meant.

Knowing this meant little.
The new house was an amateur
in its semi-finished confusion.
It lacked the angular discipline of the
government quarter we left behind.
At ten, you care little for a house
label like new or yourown. All you
want is a big ground and old friends.

My niece, at ten, knows a lot more
than I did at that age. She knows
how the home can double as
one’s school and playground overnight.
Or how you grow up suddenly one day
as the moon claws at your waist
with crimson bursts of pain.

We both know this, though. That girlhood
is a canyon born of a flaming river. At ten,
that age when you learn about the gravity
of the double-digit that designates human
longevity, you still count as your favourite
person the older sibling who excels
as the plaiter of your wild curls.