There was a time

before time,

somewhere around the end

of the decade of lost hope

that was known  as the 1980s

in which being given a phone number

by the girl

you liked

was as prized as any medal

or award handed out by the state

or the unsaid respect of your mum and dad.

That number was hard won,

it was the mark of envy

perhaps in  other’s eyes and the sudden realisation

that what came next was love’s equivalent

to standing in a closed forbidding