One (Sarah Crossan)

In Our Free Period

In the common room

they crowd around

like we are

lunch

and they are

starved animals ready to feed.

Necks long

—stretched and taut—

they strain to see.

It isn’t as though we’re performing

a butt-naked cancan routine.

All we are doing is

leaning on our crutches.

Yet this is enough.

Our very beings keep them mesmerised.

The spectators are girls with

smooth hair,

boys with collars

turned up,

their nails clipped and clean,

and as a pack they look like a scene

from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue—

everyone groomed and carefully ironed.

No one speaks

when

Tippi tells them our names

and where we’re from.

They just look at us

steadily

as though checking

we are real.

Yasmeen eventually drives off the crowd.

‘Enough!’ she shouts

and leads us to plastic seats by a fire exit.

Jon says, ‘I guess the staring

stops bothering you after a while.’

‘Would it stop bothering you?’ Tippi asks.

I swallow.

Yasmeen snorts.

Jon thinks about this for a moment.

‘No,’ he says.

‘It would piss me

the hell off.’