The Bionic Woman, aged ten

When I went into hospital
My brother gave me the free bullet pendant
From his action comic to keep me safe
Mum bought the Wonder Woman doll
I’d been after for ages
Granny said it had “come to bed eyes”
The nurses looked at me funny
When I asked what that meant

The girl in the bed next to me
Was called Fayah she was Iranian
and had polio and hair down to her bum
She always wore it up but
when she got head lice
I got it too and we
got our hair washed together

Woken at six every morning
With white buttered toast and sweet tea
Captain and Tennile on the radio
on the Sunday I said “White Rabbits”
three times at the new month
My classmates sent me a card
That read
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Knights are brave
And so are you

There weren’t many poets in my class

When they wheeled me along to the
Operating theatre
I watched the ceiling slide past
Above me and wondered
With ten year old melodrama
If I would wake up from the injection
And if they’d have a really big needle?

Coming to, woozy in the recovery room
But loving the drama
Gazing at the bloodstained casts
On my Frankenstein feet
I puked loads afterwards
I couldn’t look at Splicer bars
Ever again and the day after
When the dried up fish and mixed veg
Couldn’t tempt me

The nurse sighed and said
“It’s the second day”


Margaret was twelve and
had started her period at nine
She challenged me
To a wheelchair race round the ward
I cornered too fast and fell out
pretended to laugh it off as I lay there
Contemplating my plaster casts

When the casts came off I was
Fitted for callipers
And wore flares to hide them
But secretly pretended
I was The Bionic Woman
After all I had these metal legs
Didn’t I but then
My brother called me
Calliper Cassidy the fastest western spastic
And ruined it