I remember my childhood as a violent nursery rhyme

by daniel fuller

I remember my childhood as a violent nursery rhyme

not in the sense of the beatings—

though I remember the grass-stained floor of the changing rooms

too well to deny entirely—

but in the sense of a boy who would pray

to the awful variations upon God in his head,

asking for a world other than this one—

or at the very least a different body—to embrace him.

Apparently something about my days was so intolerable

that I would have died to everything real

in favour of the half-formed lands of my head

but somehow worse than all that is that I don’t

remember why. The cold floor and the heavy feet

pressing my body out of shape is all I have

to explain the consequences that crawl across my skin—

they are the only fictions I have left.

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Daniel Fuller has been writing poetry since the age of 12. Though born in England, he has spent time living on Darug country (Sydney), in the lands now known as Australia, and is now based in Oslo, Norway, and each of these places has left an indelible print on his work. He draws inspiration from land and country as well as the deeply personal and relational. His work has been published in Rust + Moth, Yes Poetry and Creeping Expansion, and was shortlisted in the 2020 Bridport Prize.