The arms around me are so close
and I can smell the delicate squirt of perfume
that lingers around you as you invite me
to remain the fifteen year old boy
who was in love with you
and who thirty years later still crumbles
and goes weak at the knees when I think of love
as pure deliverance and a teenage angst poem
dedicated to you, unseen
hidden in the pages of a diary in which your name
appears scrawled over and over again.
With our youth all around us,
the memories of times that never happened,
and the ones
we must never talk off, despite the fact that
remains my dearest memory in the perfume and hippy glaze,
I sink into your arms, the maternal mother,
the best friend of thirty years,
the woman of my dreams and waking moments
and I weep for that boy
in love with you.
Ian D. Hall 2015.