There was a boy who once came unstitched
from shadow, who stood almost unnoticed
as a statue, until you touched him and
remarked upon the smooth warmth of his
bronze skin. It feels like chocolate, you said
- and I saw Peter Pan anew, with mice around
his feet, as cute as Cadbury’s buttons.
I was a glutton for self punishment, swallowing
my silences as we searched for a coffee shop.
What’s the cheapest thing on the menu? I wondered
- but you were already heading for the door,
leaving me to shrug at the waiter as I failed
to order chips. I was always one step behind,
until you took me by the arm and steered me into lamp posts.
I could believe we were ghosts, except the squirrels
knew we were soft touch tourists and posed for
photographs in exchange for peanuts. No-one else
could see us, as we waved at passing buses
and spoke German to confuse commuters:
The secret language of our failure to translate
an afternoon into a lifetime’s worth of love.
You took off your glove and I tried to read
the message in your palm. Your small plump hand,
with lines as topographical as the tube map
above our heads. I could not see the journey;
no dark strangers or riches. Only the fingers
that you had steepled in prayer. Open the doors
and where are the people? God did not know.
We sat through a show and laughed
our separate laughs. Then I walked you home,
feeling like a mime artist carrying
a sheet of plate glass, as the last train
fled into a tunnel the same colour
as your eyes. It took twenty-five years
for me to reach its destination.
I thought I saw you at the station, clutching
flowers to mark our memory. All those wreaths
being laid by wailing women and grown men
with jaws a-tremble. The smell of petals
fading in the sun. Maybe I knew we were doomed:
Such grief and loss must have seeped
back through the decades, don’t you think?
