The boy at Charing X

I followed you up the steps from the platform, unaware until you
stood aside and sweetly gestured for me to go ahead of you
up the escalator.

I stood flutteringly ahead of you, watching the posters glide past,
thinking of you perched reassuringly behind me, my
guardian.

Did I intentionally allow you to get ahead of me
in the station proper? and was I secretly pleased when
you walked the way I wanted to walk?

I followed you out into the bright, admiring your impossibly thin
calves, angular, endearingly knobbly, disappearing into
heeled boots.

I've enjoyed for myself the feeling of sway and poise that heels
promote, and in you I saw embodied the glorious taut swish that I
wishfully imagine in myself

swinging down the road.

Dark trousers, elegant fawn coat, flashes of colour at your
neckline, the flirtatious pride of
peacock silk. The glances of strangers,
confused or
anxious, but

I saw your pride and your beauty, and I thought you saw mine
When you stood aside and sweetly gestured, and in our quick
meeting of eyes

there was
home.