We can still walk those streets –

past the chippy and the offie at the end

of my road, over the motorway bridge

to the street where you grew up.

These were our places.  Tightly knitted

red brick rows with a memory of cobbles.

Chimney pots and black slate roofs.

Yours and mine: a mile apart,

two Salford roads filled with our

stories.  Both of us playing the same

games, differently.  A version of you

I never knew with a turmoil of yellow

hair, in the middle of a group of kids

whose names you’ll tell me a few years

later, playing, running, learning

how to be the man I’ll marry. 

A few streets away I’m walking

around Langworthy estate with

my brothers solving invented mysteries

like some working class Enid Blyton kid,

unbrushed hair down to my waist

and Digby, my black mongrel dog at the

end of a lead.  Salford Mams standing

in doorways tut-tutting at us, hands

on hips, while their own kids are climbing

over garden fences or smoking in

the park.  Signs that say Play Street

in front of boarded up houses;

Ginnels lined with wooden gates hiding

outdoor toilets covered in rusted paint cans.

Crofts which one day will be housing

but for now are empty apart from fly-tipped

treasures – wood for bonfires or old pram wheels

to turn into a go kart with no braking system.

Our lives, separate and connected.

You there and me here, us before

we were us, quietly unaware of the

other half of our story a few streets away.