Clare Starling

a14 improvement scheme

Late one night in ‘96, coming home after furtive sex
with my boyfriend I gunned the Nova around twisting lanes
spun the whole 360, slammed boot-first
into the ditch

is there anything valuable in the car
the woman asked who saw me crawling out,
stopped, and took me home to heart-stopped parents —
nothing I said

now we take the bend sedately in the Auris, weighed down
with family lunch at The Old Bridge, I look out for the place
it could have ended at eighteen
but it’s not there

new roads complete and alien rear up over levelled ground
the station’s naked, treeless, what was valuable —
my young secret flaming unknown self with everything to come —
that’s what was lost

Clare Starling started writing poetry after her son was diagnosed with autism during lockdown. She particularly loves writing about our connection with nature, and about how neurodiversity can give different perspectives on the world. Her forthcoming pamphlet ‘Magpie's Nest’ won the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Competition 2023, and her work has been published in Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Wildfire Words, Sarasvati, Erbacce, Poetrygram, Porridge, Obsessed With Pipework and the Passionfruit Review, and was Highly Commended in the AUB Poetry Prize.

Clare wrote the following about her poem:

In A14 Improvement Scheme I was interested in how we return to places from the past to find them unrecognisable, while, in the intervening years, we have also changed into new versions of ourselves. I have recently come to see myself and my family through the lens of neurodiversity, leading to a different understanding of our past and present. The poem mourns the loss of the younger version of the speaker, but also values the perspective and knowledge that come from looking back from a future time.