Marauding

Turn the kitchen into a
treasure hunt,
let us eat three club biscuits
from the vitalite tub in the fridge
if we want-
this is a ruleless house.
Take us over to the co-op
with its sparkling floor
and let us pick out any plastic tat.
The gallones van comes,
its tinkling song pulling into the cul de sac,
and we can have an ice cream
if we want,
or all go by different names
in our roleplay game of
running a fictional boarding school.
I'm doris, you're georgina, she's marge,
inexplicably.
We run about in a
chocolate high,
chasing each other through the garden,
while our parents trawl garden centres
leaving us to maraud with grandma.
We wince when our grandad washes our hair in the bath,
but roar with laughter when grandma dries us,
pretending to drop us,
before climbing into soft pyjamas
and wondering after another treat.
Grandma cries when we go home,
and presses money into my hands in secret,
and she runs around the corner to wave us off,
always there outside the white lion pub,
waving like we'll never come back,
but we count down the weeks until
its a school holiday again, so we
can walk into that house again,
to the smell of welsh cakes just out of the oven,
our beds all made up,
the vitalite tub restocked.