Poetry: Still

Then I kept my hand on his kneecap, and underneath
the flat of my palm a field of hairs flattened into
cold clammy flesh. He
had gone very still, and in his stillness time seemed to stop… So.
I knew his eyes had not strayed. Not once. Never from the screen –
then his fingers – they tapped. tapped tapped. the Nintendo buttons. So
I gripped. And I – patted. Then, slowly, my hand grazed, upfield.

-----

But, after that day, he still put his arm around me.
Still joked about tennis skirts and girls who wore them.
That was why, six months of four-classmate movies and five-friend meals
later, three months before final year exams,
when a friend, looking away, taught me the word everyone knew –

zengkunophobia: only a word, after all –

I slept. Woke. Slept. And why if awake I memorized dreams.

-----

And I did exceptionally well for my exams. Do, still.
Entered a top, if unexpected, junior college.
Still. Time passes. One day I glimpsed a man, and moved on. And on…

-----

Until I grasped that time passes and stops. I grow older, and
stay fifteen. So in love I will always be gently haunted
by a hand resting on a field of hair and flesh, waiting.
Still.