You came and stood beside me, scented by the summer in the air
and watched me standing: cumin-kissed and onion-blinded
in the furnace of our kitchen, molten temper smoldering;
verbal shotgun cocked, its crosshairs on your forehead.

You did not speak to me but glued my floured fingers to your arm and ran away;
we left my voice behind, still clamouring of keys and pans and burning
as you took me to the river, pelting helter skelter
through fields of wilting rape, yellow as daffodils, nestling
in sun-scorched clay that yields up the brands of previously passing hooves.

You took me to the river.
You let go my hands; splashed about
and threw up shards of light in your searching. I washed clean
in surface-warmed water and sat on the bank, grass prickling
at my thighs, a girl of fourteen again, watching your focus,
sizing you up. Water-flicked; still in combats and tight black t-shirt, decades on.
Tight shoulders and now-softening belly cast in profile.

In the end you found your trophy, patience paying you
with rich reward as once it paid your fourteen year old self.
This time: four frogs. Sat side by side on the other bank, watching
us as we romped in cool water and wondering what mating
ritual would make an animal behave this way?

We returned, meandering slowly, hand in hand
and found ourselves locked out. I bit my tongue
and did not remind you of my clamouring for keys.
You broke a window and we clambered through, ungainly
and awkward suddenly. Red-cheeked, you went to change your clothes
and I stood, framed by our kitchen window, mixing bowl in hand,
confronted by a dancing sea of sunshine-topped stalks.

I felt the weight of forty intervening years that vanish
now and then like wandering pets and let us play-act for a while
until, as always, they return, all teasing gentleness yet heavy
somehow with the loss of all the things we thought we knew back then.