{Afterthought}

Every so often—ever so rarely—that feeling of a cold clean blade sliding under my skin and lifting the tissue off my bones: I can’t help but stare; not stare, but gaze upon in wonder.

I pretend to play Jass on my phone; I do play Jass on my phone, but my concentration is shot, I don’t remember what’s gone; I can see what is trump but I no longer care what it means: the boy sitting opposite on the tube, he’s not a boy, he’s a man; in his salmon coloured trousers with his caramel shoes over dark navy socks; his deep sea green jumper (or is that navy too?) his light glacier lake coloured shorts, showing a bit only between shirt and belt, a soft plain material, not briefs and not boxers; his finesculpted lips, his long dark chestnut hair and the ever-a-tad-absent expression. His tallness. The strength of his thighs by comparison.

He alights at Victoria.

I pull myself together. I have to pull myself together. I’ve written a book about him. About him and about all the others: there are only two or three or three or four, they are so so rare and so precious and so, so incomprehensibly beautiful. Let not it be said that I did not draw from that beauty the vernating breath of a melancholy yen.

Oh to be nineteen and a poet. Was I ever nineteen? I was once a poet; albeit briefly. Perhaps I can be so again…