Blog

28th February, 2025

Friday Poem – ‘Whisper It’ by Emily Cotterill

Close up photo of a pile of golden crisps

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Whisper It’ by Emily Cotterill from her collection Significant Wow.

Whisper It
What was the name of that game we played,
pooling our answers on the playground
to questions like ‘favourite flavour crisps?’
or ‘boy you want to kiss?’
But it was a girl, the first time
I felt what I learnt is a pull
to pressed lips. I waited
with boys for something different.
They don’t use the word on television –
don’t even whisper it.
She works at a shop in my hometown, where the truth
of myself is still looming and massive, at the spot
where I found a delayed first kiss –
where I came late to what this feeling is.
You know I asked my mum once, ‘am I frigid?’
The small girls answer, ‘prawn cocktail, Jordan’
‘salt and vinegar, Michael’ and I don’t know
that I am enough of anything, floundering,
‘pickled onion Monster Munch,’
I am still whispering it.