Yvonne

                                               

My heart came of age

One balmy sports day

When Yvonne won the hundred.

Her quiet perspiration made me sweat out loud.

I ached to touch her,

Not like my signed England cricket bat

Somewhere between my Princess Leia Poster

And our slate-grey Persian cat

Her buttocks rose like new proved dough

Held high with braided hair.

So thick and tight the

Gloss oozed out like blackberries

Wrung through muslin.

I never braved her orbit

But glimpsed her second hand

On the backs of spoons and polished floors,

In a finger-smudged brass escutcheon

Or the yawn of a classroom door

I the savant, she my time

Penning the need for her on every lesson.

Skirting conversations, like

An expectant father fielding questions,

Flies undone.

Years later

Tight with drink and starving

I found Yvonne shovelling chips to midnight bums,

Air thick with grease and chat-up lies.

Head bowed low,

Staring into boiling fat.

In the back room,

Pressed hard against a frosted pane

A young boy wore my face

With no appetite for pity

Wishing he was still at school