Claire McMahon in Moonlit
Distance
I liked that
You never knew
The appropriate sense of space
Or pretended to anyway
Banging your bony hip
Against mine
What were you up to
In the bookstore
And behind the glass
At the Book of Kells display
That you insisted
I should not go to.
You acted as my guide, anyway
I thought we were cousins
You proved to me
We were not
As you looked through me,
With your western Irish-blue eyes
Glassy from mid-afternoon drinks.
Standing at the arch of Trinity
You had become a man
Filled out in the shoulders,
Muscular in the legs, not the you
I knew but still the same slow tongue
You slowed me right down-
"This is not New York," you said
Leaning me on the campus wall,
Our secret space exposed.