Strangers like you

You froze beautifully
- quite the material girl -
a hand raised to your mouth,
the longest summer I remember
captured darkly by your skin
that turned abruptly pale
when you saw me.
I don't know why

I came back -
that humid afternoon
I suppose, had made me more
than usually hungry for you,
the cool shadows of your
whitewashed flat, and the cool
of your hands, beckoned -
I was drawn by the heat

and my need
and the gulls crying overhead
earlier, after our sleepy lovemaking -
you seemed younger then,
stronger than me, wrapped
up in sunlight, sparkling
and I don't know who
was most surprised

when I returned.
His eyes were wider certainly
but I was somehow someone else.
Strangers like you standing there,
captured in that pool of light all
statuesque but frail as shadows,
have haunted me since
but none so gloriously.