To a Girl I Hurt

On the kitchen floor
at Charlotte’s house
we had unprotected sex.

I was eighteen,
horse-fit, long-haired
wreathed in hash smoke
lit up always
with my idiot glory.

You were seventeen
a dancing light
in hippy skirts
and blue tint shades
an angular
unblemished yearling
all elbows and laughter
and kisses.

Your thighs were cold on mine
as we squirmed
on kitchen tiles
lit cigarettes
and smoked them
laughing
while I was still inside you.

Three months later
an abortion is arranged
by the mother of our friend.
Your mother must never know.

You are whisked away
and then returned
to join the game
passed a spliff and kissed.
You smile
a single hammered note
on a prepared
piano.

Just then
in the swirling air
above rooftops
something cruel is born.

Three years later
I ran into you by chance
in Sydney Street.
You wore your skin
more tightly then
a casual queen
of well-cut hair
and manicures
of snappy air kisses
and Sauvignon Blanc.

Self-possessed and absolute
you insisted I attend
a party
at your house that night.

I was nervous
expecting all your pop star friends
but on arrival
I saw at once
it was a party thrown
for only me.

You poured us chilled champagne
a bottle each
and then, once drunk,
you held my hand
and suddenly
we were far from land
waking three years before
on the sinking
doomed Titanic
of our love.

Dark spirals gleam beyond
your eyes.
You open the deepest vault
inside your bedside table
and withdraw a sheath
of unbound papers
and then
for hours, you read aloud
the letters you have written
to our unborn child
while sadly, it occurs to me
I have never once
considered it a baby.
I have never thought that way at all.

And here I sit
a quarter of a century on
ploughing through fields
en route to London.

It’s still hard to write
still hurts to recall
how hurt you had been
by it all.

Forgive me.