I Knew Your Beauty Then
I.
I scrape and scrawl
through my threnody
for first love because I
must: love past
is forever revenant.
Decades past, my heart
was
a favourite stranger of
mine, until
I knew you and in the
knowing we
made familiar of the
estranged:
I looked in your eyes,
lost
in the blue roses flecks
to bright ebon pupils
shining.
My heart then, had me
believe with
alchemical urgency my
first love was
going to be my last and
that was
a pressure on you too
soon enough
to suffocate what we
were then.
II.
Summer nights, I walked
you home: cutting
through the lot of
Zellers, you always climbed
in a cart and I drove
you round making,
taking, crazy turns,
sudden wheelies.
You would laugh and
scream, mock gasp,
giggle screech,
"Keep the front wheels up!"
I would feel the weight
of your leaning back
against me, the warmth
of your shoulders,
my eye at your ear, near
cheek on cheek
in hurry hasten speed
the narrowing gyre
around lamplight after
lamplight making
our own breeze in placid
sultry night --
your Ambrosian redolence
I breathed
in deep, and pressed
against you,
making, taking, lunatic
turns,
abrupt grocery cart
gyrates.
III.
Under tree cover one
evening,
it was you laughing who
pushed me to the ground.
"Turnabout is fair
play," you laughed.
... All is fair in love
and whatever, I said.
"So, is this
'love', or is it 'whatever'?"
I felt then like a
housecat that darted
outside, only to look
for the way back in.
But, only for one slim
moment:
I knew your beauty then.
IV.
We were sure they
laughed at us
at the lake, wrote us
off with derision
as some goth slash punk
rock chick
with your fatigues green
and black outfit
and your carefully
styled crazy hair,
and the incongruously
short haired
heavy metal kid with a
jean jacket patch
of a heavy metal band
nobody heard of
that we knew of, except
for you.
We looked up wool pulled
summer skies,
as we made angels in the
sun hot sand,
touched each other's
fingers, wing to wing.
V.
I laugh now, thinking of
the end.
When you were through
with me you
just couldn't say so, so
you sent me
home one day with a mix
tape,
all of Side A being five
times in a row
"I Started
Something I Couldn't Finish"
by The Smiths, with
nothing on Side B.
I was confused when I
played it -
I assumed you really
liked that song.
"Did you have time
to play the tape?"
... Yeah. The song
played like five times.
"Well, uh, what did
you think of it?"
... I liked the
guitarist; not the singer.
It sounded like you
dropped the phone
and reeled it back up by
the curl cord:
you had to break it down
for me in the end.
VI.
I have loved since those
days of you,
for longer and with more
maturity,
but first awkward
beautiful love
may never be forgotten.
Summer nights under
moon shadow trees,
and sand angel days
remain and haunt.
I knew your beauty then.
But now, when I think of
the malignancy that
ravaged
a once Rubenesque form,
the erosion of your
shape
before oversoon passing,
I shiver to my marrow.
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