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ALL THE MEN I NEVER MARRIED No4     Last year at primary school, our last Sports Day and one of the girls in our class finally snapped   and hit you with her rounders bat I can still hear the thunk from across the field   I wasn’t sorry, even when you ran past crying We hated the way you followed us around,   called us your girlfriends, the top of your head barely reaching our shoulders, and the smell,   not just unwashed skin, the same clothes day after day, the same trainers with holes in, but something else,   some animal smell I imagined was catching You often tried to hold our hands or stroke our hair,   or rest your small white fingers on our legs I wasn’t sorry for you when we ran away   because you tried to lift our skirts above our waists, or when the boys held their noses   because you’d peed yourself again Back in the heat of that sports day, a whistle is blown   and children cheer and that rounders bat sails away through the afternoon, turning over and over,   thrown by that girl, the first in our class to wear a bra, who said you’d tried to touch her strap,   that she’d hit you again if she had to Brown sacks crumpled on the grass,   spoons from the egg and spoon race in a glittering heap and children moving crab-like across the field,   you already disappeared inside, and that girl, still angry and defiant   The next day, your mother, waiting in reception She never came to parents evenings or concerts,   yet there she was, hunched in a chair, pale-faced and waiting for the head teacher to appear   I like to imagine I felt sorry for you then, Knowing you had nobody to speak for you about the bat,   your unwashed clothes, your hands, the way they could not stop touching things       ALL THE MEN I NEVER MARRIED No9   two hours with you sitting at opposite ends of your single bed   your feet level                        with my chest my feet level                with your waist   almost like           being a teenager again almost like                   a giving in   when you put your hand on