I called for you, spoke your name
thought you might want to play
a summer fling, a cheeky thing
that had crossed me, inappropriately
some years ago when I came
with another, and in passing
you’d thrown a polite
“G’day. Are you enjoying your stay?”
your voice pushing me down
to a place of imagination, or
perhaps premonition –
the witchy kind, inherent
a certain knowing, as clear as a bell
we would find each other,
some other time, in some other life
when I had course-corrected
my way back to this place
your kisses on my face, my skin
I take you all in, and cry out to a god
I don’t believe in.
An explanation of sorts
so that the audience should not mistake
the selfie, the vanity,
the Look at Me
for anything other than an attempt to save
the memory of my face,
while it still holds the shape
of my fading youth.
Indeed, once it is gone, it is gone
and I’m sure it won’t be long
until it escapes me completely.
So this is me, desperately
recording every picture
of this very moment in time
here, I wanted the world to see
that I was once pretty.