When I was young, love was a different concept to what it is now.

I once laid down in the grass by Brill Hill ready to tell you

how much I loved you , to declare at the top of my voice

to the clouds streaming past in military order, clean as a whistle, that I

truly could not imagine life without you and not realising for a single minute

as we both sat there, the grass staining our arses

through the cheap childish clothes we wore, breathless and steaming

from the cycle ride from Sheep Street in Bicester on a perfect summer’s day

as the days of such bliss would soon be behind us, that you would tell me

at that moment you were gay and was I alright, did I have something to say

to that. What could I say,” Oh, I’m sorry girl

but I love you”. Yes because that would have been stupid!

Now of course I realise it was the ginger hair, the way we had grown up together since

we were ten and that I cared for you deeply, just meant in the scheme of things,

that I was horny and was ready to tell you what I believed to be true.

 

When I was younger, I professed my love

with far too much abandon and for that

now I apologise…

hand on heart and hope to never meet you in  a dark alley

where there is the possibility that you would take great delight

in slashing my throat with a serrated knife and then stamping down hard

on the place where to be brutally frank, I couldn’t care less to see.

Thankfully that part of me since seventeen has also never given a damn

for the darkness, but I did truly believe that I loved you.

 

As a friend I have said those words with passion and meant it,

I have loved every person, almost all, I have ever met and wished

to greet them accordingly. I love you, I do love you, but

I figure these days what I mean by love is the sheer and unremitting

thought that love actually means is to not want to see

the person you are with, whether having a cup of tea and a discussion

over a painful subject, or in bed with the pillows snoring gently, their covers

rustling like April hit leaves,

or even wide awake in hope of being a synthetic

voyeur and watching the duvet tossed aside as a Roman Gladiator

would throw down a challenge to the tiger in the pen,

that most of all, most sincerest of all love,

the one in which I will say to you with hand upon heart

is I truly love you

for I do not want

to see you cry.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015