A Lizard Sonnet

Oscar Hansen

If you travel to escape the small lizard on your back

you will eventually arrive outside your parents' house.

Only they have long since gone,

someone else lives there. Perhaps a child sleeps in your bed

dreaming your dreams?

You walk down a street where you used to play

but no one knows you, and the sense of loss overwhelms you.

Swallow hard, don't cry, because your memory is untrue.

You left to get away from a small-minded town, poverty, and screams

in the night; but it was worth going back to remind you what

an awful place you left.

I have a small lizard in the kitchen. I have tried

to kill it because it is grey and without redeeming colours that

could make it into a pet but it is too quick, and hides in corners

I can`t reach, so it can live for now.