They really thought they were sparing us something.
Perhaps a meathead with goal-post arms
lifting us up by the cotton-polyester blend,
suspending us over AstroTurf like Darth Vader
before sending us crashing back to the ground cradling our necks in grubby fingertips.

Alas, instead, by year nine I was carrying a spare in
my back pocket, in the likely event of a corridor hit and run.
A sudden jerk at the collar, and all that would remain was
a squeal of delight, and a flutter of fabric in fist, trailing
gleefully through a quicksand of white shirts and black blazers,

or a delightful game that required three plus participants,
one almost certainly not by choice, and the others callous,
possessing hand-eye coordination honed by a winter
of bi-weekly rugby, and a summer of egos tossed
around classroom walls like insults, or boomerangs.

Now, my clip-on tie is snagged, redundant, tossed asunder
after its final outing, to gather dust and swell contusion,
part strange nostalgia for a time when lost ties were of para- mount stress,
and part mild-annoyance that every formal occasion since has been
just irregular enough that I still need a YouTube tutorial

every time I actually have to wear one of the bloody things.

Hailing from West Dorset, Jonah Corren is a poet and singer-songwriter. His work has been published in Ink, Sweat & Tears, SPOONFEED and others. He is also an alumnus of BBC New Creatives (2019/20) and The Writing Room (2021).