The Sunday Poem: Five Dollar Shake by Emily Berry

It didn’t sound that expensive

for a milkshake, even in the

’90s, which was probably the

last time I drank one, vanilla

or strawberry, though maybe I’d

converted the currency wrong.

I wish I could remember how

it felt, to not be accounting

for it all, the question of how

and when, and how much, whatever

it was would be paid for. Had I

been happier once, or was I

even then wondering if things

had been better before, and how

they would be after, the sweetness

already retrospective, as soon

as I put my mouth to the straw?

Emily Berry’s most recent collection is Unexhausted Time, published by Faber. She is editor-in-chief of the bedtime stories app Sleep Worlds

Illustration by Chris Riddell