Stockholm Syndrome

I hated the school, its meanness, its stench
of disinfectant, dogs, and last week’s dinner,
how the looming old house vibrated on brown
and squeaked like polished lino,

the way the boys would shove you around
in the playround, the way you were always to blame,
no matter who bashed into who, who spoke
out of turn, who threw the potatoes.

And yet I would find myself, after I left,
climbing a tree to post notes through the air-vent
in the library wall that sided our garden,
or stood on a bank peering over a fence

where the plum trees hid me from the eyes of the house
on my side, from the crouching classrooms on theirs,
where the leaves underfoot were as deep as autumn
and the scrawny fox made his den.