It was all suds, at the time. I wonder  

if you would agree, that my well-practised deadpan  

belied the new music, yours, and the way the perennially prickly,  

pattering pipes I knew, fell to a picturesque pastoral  

painted by a perfectly cavalier, playful piano.  

​

Your melody, like melting sand, cooled after it struck me twice: 

once as stained glass. Then once again,  

as a glass cannon, a whole, real person, a cause of sonder, full of banter and love and doubt. And poorly planned plot twists. But like any (bad) soap opera, 

the foam blossomed and the suds sparkled, so anything overly convenient

eventually washed away; so too, did our hate live,  

only to die as something mistaken for hate,  

and it was the nostalgia, the good kind,  

that lived on to grow up with me. I haven’t forgotten  

the terrible things, but instead remember them as things,  

that were terrible, if only just to make things a little easier 

for apologies. 

​

Today, I run lightly without your compass, but my senses snag 

on old film tracks, new wind smells, old photos of genuine grins, and clouds that don’t age at all; 

these things again blow the helium into my heart, so it doesn’t race, rather, floats,

and floats, and floats