Growing Apart (rev)

We knew their names
or thought we did,
we knew their faces
from an album of places
we‘d played in –
in a lifetime of fabulous
childhood shared.

Joined by our origins
of common ascent –
whether they liked it
or cared, they knew what
it meant to be watched
and we knew too,
though a reason evaded.

By being unmoved, by
denying the treason they
clearly gathered under,
we could renew
contemporaneous
friendships if we dared.

While it was true we’d
suffered them forever
as yet we’d never met;
today was the first we
could meet in this state –
if we could just take our
feet past the line.

Behind fey hands we
traded coy glances in an
electric air, declining to stare,
too uncool for real style,
but one had to watch closely
to see who watched whom.

We found it bizarre, defying
all wit to seem not to care
or show worries a bit while
emotionally primed and dying
despairing she mightn’t be watching,
or declaring her stake.

The debate about playing
the part still rages, the roles
they are playing, the role of
teenagers – uneasily acting
the fires in their hearts
and caught in the chill
of their growing apart.
© 26 June 2006, I.D. Carswell