

The Hunger
An electric gap opened between my hand and yours on the remote
Bach’s solo suite for cello counterpoint to TV-strobed
Apricot cushions, my pyjama legs draped over yours
ridiculous and puppet-like as you withdraw
I panic like someone nodding at an English-speaking foreigner
so close, so strange
and yet so tantalisingly familiar-
You and I invented our own reality
in a hot and bright atmosphere of synchronicities;
a shared passion for C.S.Lewis (had secretly read Lace)
collected Kinder Surprise, agreed on sacrificing our hymens
for tampons over panty liners, we relayed one another’s
impulses as though the air between us was water, our brains coils
drawing the current between your house at number seventeen and
mine at thirty-one
we
dared one another to feats of mortal danger, drove our
bikes into the water-filled quarry, made rites of passage over
condemned rope bridges, channelled menstruation’s terror on
gas pipes thirty feet above the ground, on government electricity lots,
on holidays where my parents and yours tried to separate us
loathed each other and agreed on one thing only- it had to stop:
our
obsessive contact, chocolate-milk binges, backyard back-flips in the pool, on the trampoline, on the grass at the corner lot, where we drank ice-magic and spun
around to make ourselves puke
I sprawled, skull like a melon in your tanned lap and
bum-puffed a sophistocated brand of menthol cigarette
we had mulberry fights, giggling, descending into violence
forcing black and purple fingers into one another’s nostrils and ears,
clawing each other’s faces, we
made-up, hogged the downstairs bathroom,
swept blue and purple eye-shadow
streaked blush, tonged curls, pouted at the mirror,
prodded and compared nipples, critiquing form and style
practicing so we’d be ready for him, when he arrived
He
came
like a puncture
You escaped like the hiss of air from a tyre,
but I caught your hand on the remote
when Catherine Deneuve kissed Susan Sarandon on a late night TV
film called the Hunger
even though I could sense the danger
and knew you were too old for vampires.