Didier (Poetry)

Why would he remember me ? —
some sixteen-year-old English girl
from near-on fifty years ago.

It was a fleeting girl-boy fling
brought on by sun and sea
and all that giggly flirty chat
that goes with being in a foreign town —
me the two-week tourist — him
the handsome smiling local whose
English was no better than
my half-learnt schoolgirl French.

Our conversation stumbled into
holding hands and kissing
it was nineteen-sixty-seven
and the world was tuned to love
or so it seemed back then
when heaven was the beach by day
then dancing in the discotheque — smooching
well into the dizzy pre-dawn hour.

All things end. I can’t remember crying
when I left or making promises to write.
Perhaps I reasoned even as
I journeyed home those thousand miles
that there’d be others eager
to fill my still-warm vacancy.

Yet, for all of that
intense but so-short time
I was his, and he was mine —
or so it seemed ...

Poor memory narrates the tale —
edits detail down to fit the space
with no room for very much.
However hard I try
I can’t recall his face —
he’s thinned to affection’s hazy ghost —
all that remains
is the one thing that I’m certain of —
his name.