Black leather
boots; worn through the sole,
my socks are flooded with rain.
The coat
is not mine, hair combed back
and pinned I
may look the business but it's
all a facade.

What if they
hear the buried country accent, see that
I'm an imposter? Realise I'm not even
twenty one? I've got
to push on, keep smiling,
keep climbing, swimming upstream
in my battered black boots.