The Names Never Faded.

There were many who I held a candle to

in a world full of chalk dust, well aimed projectiles

and the despair of being told that you

were not good enough to breathe the same air

as the teacher’s favourite Rottweiler,

snarling, punishing with savage artistry

and then finished off with the red pen death

of being

wrong, wrong, wrong.

 

There were many, my diary attests to this unhappy fact,

who in one way or another made my life more bearable

when not in English, History or the love of the drama

filled classroom or hearing the notes of half hearted

violin sentencing most to death by bow

but to me prolonged the agony

felt as I thought of their names walking the two miles home.

 

Whether the first kiss of the girl who

I rebelled against, to my shame, as I tasted

the smoke under her lips, the burning of two young fires

casting adrift on and off for the next three years,

the ginger haired woman who I never kissed

till we were both messed up

and need of love for one night only as the thirties

took their toll, my fleeting glimpse of mid-life crisis

when there was no crisis to be found.

The passion of the girl who at fourteen caused me

embarrassment as she stroked my leg with purpose

in the hall and for a bet, we both lost that day,

the girl who stole my hat and ran laughing

across the manicured lawn

of the British Museum, only to be caught

as fifteen year olds are oft to do and came within

a second of having her sandpaper coloured lips

gently kissed,

to the girl I never asked out at all, my dear friend

to whom our secret desire to be more than we could be

on the stage drove us to a deeper passion, honest, frank and a different

kind of love achieved.

 

None though have dominated the thought like the girl

I took to Banbury, a true date and away from the

back of the sport centre snogging arena in which

many of us graduated with ease.

I thank her for that date, it changed the way I looked

at the world and she has been seen in many,

not least the girl I lost on the bus, the would be artist

on her way to Paris as we talked

of all for twelve hours on the Greyhound

and whom I never saw again.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015