大象传媒

Best Friend

When I was four and almost a half
I loved you with a passion
Only experienced by little girls;
Best friend intensities,
Whispered confidences,
Heads together and joined at the hip,
World-oblivious, world- creating
Absorbed in each other
Through the endless days.

You were the last thing
I waved to at night
Face framed in the window opposite
And, throwing back curtains,
The person I greeted
When I surfaced,
Shooting awake ,
Racing to windows,
Sure in the knowledge
That you would be waiting
With strange signs and our secret language

Wild in the absence of fathers
And bane of our mothers' existence
Life centred around us.
Till the morning when I opened the curtains
And your house was gone.
Direct hit in the night,
While I slept safe
Under the stairs
In the arms of my fearless mother

I never saw you again
Though for months I looked
More awful than death
Was the disintegration
Of flesh And security And trust
But sixty years on
I still remember you.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.