Pause,
On the corner of Kings’ and
23rd North West and smile,
let your face crumble like
a cookie dipped in spring milk.

Tell her the musky scent
of her perfume reminds you
of spring wafting in on the wind
heady, yet subtle, hardly felt.

Moan
about the weather, of
snow pelting down like hail
of sunshine shoved into a corner
by clouds and then nightfall

When you find she’s
clutching Chaucer to her chest
and McEwan in her bag,
read her a line from Komunyakaa:
‘I took seven roads to get here
and almost died three times’*.

But if her fingers linger
or tap dance on her phone
disappear-
because sometimes the nostalgia
of an unsoiled memory
is worth more than the pain
of paradise lost.

—
* Borrowed from one of my favourite Komunyakaa poems, ‘Providence’; from the Pleasure Dome anthology.