In Helen Dunmore's "To My Nine-Year-Old Self," an adult speaker addresses her younger self, shedding light upon the different experiences that come with age. She begins by asking her younger self for forgiveness, then admonishing her for looking surprised, perplexed, and eager to be gone. The younger version is evoked as a very active child who balances on her hands or a tightrope, prefers to run rather than walk, and to climb rather than run. The child's favorite thing of all is to leap from a height.
The speaker states that she spoiled the body they once shared, displaying her scars and the careful way she moves to protect a bad back or bruised foot. She recounts how, as a child, she used to jump out of the ground floor window three minutes after waking on a summer morning. A dream the speaker had as a child is compared to the freshness of the white paper she used to write it on. The speaker states that they made a start in writing but would get engrossed in something else: a baby vole, a bag of sherbet lemons, the ice-lolly factory she created, a wasp trap, and a den by a cesspit. These are the product of what the poet calls a summer of ambition.
The speaker would like to say that she and her younger self could be friends, but truthfully they have nothing in common except their few shared years. As an adult, the speaker knows she is keeping the child she's addressing from her activities: picking rosehips, hiding from men in cars, lunging out over the water on a rope, etc. She breaks off the list, stating that she has enough fears for them both and that she does not want to cloud the young girl's day.
The speaker takes leave of her younger self as the child, in an ecstasy of concentration, slowly peels a ripe scab from her knee to taste on her tongue.
