To my nine-year-old self Flashcards
“You must forgive me.”
Begins with a short statement - immediate intrigue
Envisions the physical reaction her younger self would have - two separate people
“Don’t look so surprised, perplexed and eager to be gone, balancing on your hands or on the tightrope. You would rather run than walk, rather climb that run/ rather leap from a height than anything.”
Nothing can happen fast enough, appears to be afraid of nothing.
Adventurous activities, flits between emotions = image of youthful excitement and curiosity
Subtly alludes to blissful ignorance of children - tightrope = palpable danger
“I have spoiled this body we once shared.”
Poet’s split personality
Differences between young and old - sense of grief
‘spoiled’ possesses withheld bitterness - beyond repair or redemption
Motif - rotting fruit, illness, her thirst for life has expired
“Look at the scars, and watch the way I move,/ careful of a bad back or bruised foot.
Do you remember how, three minutes after waking/ we’d jump straight out of the ground floor window/ into the summer morning.?
Younger self - dynamic verb “jump” contrasts semantic field of injury and weakened description of herself now
The structure and circumstances of her life no longer make childlike freedom possible
Summer morning - romanticised, blissful imagery idolizing childhood. Ideas of new beginnings and infinite opportunities
“That dream we had, no doubt its as fresh in your mind as the white paper to write on.”
Ambiguity of ‘that dream’ links to the everchanging interests in childhood - the dream itself is unimportant its the fact that she was able to find meaning and joy in everyday life. “That” suggests the significance it has to the poet - still a personal possession
“white paper” symbolic of endless options, untouched, unruined - childhood purity
Truncated structure reflects the mind of a child - unstrained and always having something to do
“I’d like to say that we could be friends/ but the truth is we have nothing in common/ beyond a few shared years. I won’t keep you then.
Defeated realization - dissociates back to herself
Unbridgeable divide - shift from ‘we’ when she was still holding onto her younger self (to a point of delusion as we know the child never replies/ doesn’t exist anymore) to ‘I’d’ - her splintered identity is finally completely severed
‘then’ is end-stopped creating a moment of blankness and silence. Takes a moment to process everything before beginning to leave it behind - represents the physical strain and devastation her loss has on her
“time to hide down scared lanes from men in cars after girl-children,”
Sinister elements of the poem, she knows that she cannot protect her child-self from the dangers of the world and that her experience of them is inevitable
The poet’s voice comes through here as she is alluding to serious issues in our society and how even the most romanticised version of childhood (this one) still contains the potential for harm and damage to be done
‘hide’ and ‘after’ create a sense of a game reflecting the naive perspective of children - however they are clearly happier for it. Could be a way for the poet to cope with the reality of this issue (personal trauma?) imagines her younger self ‘hiding’ - shielded from the danger.
“,or to lunge out over the water/ on a rope that swings from that tree/ long buried in housing -/ but no, I shan’t cloud your morning. God knows/ I have fears enough for us both -“
Finality - the child will go back to playing and the adult will go back to her ‘fears’. There is a dark element to the poet’s life that the child is unaware of. Explaining it would only ‘cloud’ the child’s life and taint it with unnecessary anxieties.
Physical distance - the ‘tree’ is ‘long buried’ she is literally unable to recreate her moments of joy.
Self- presenting as a burden, the initial happiness she felt from reminiscing is fading as she comes to terms with the impossibility of return.
“I leave you in an ecstasy of concentration/ slowly peeling a ripe scab from your knee/ to taste it on your tongue.
Poignant description of a child’s concentration - Her greatest task at present is ‘peeling a ripe scab’
Stark contrast to the speaker’s and readers’ own lives. Universal - readers will be able to recall their own similar memories
‘Ripe scab’ duplicity of the child and adult’s perception. Child - it is something new to explore and soak up, whereas as the adult will recognise it as one of the first injuries we know are yet to come for her in the future. Everything can be interpreted through either lens and is meant to be considered in both.
‘ripe’ could also contrast her ‘spoiled body’, leaving us with a final reminder of the disconnection between childhood and adulthood and the impossibility to ever return to the fulfilling life she once had.
