The Younger Version (Poetry)

Breath mingled with breath in the supermarket
a faint imagined gasp as you passed by, eyes averted
though I’m sure as I can be that you noticed
me by the biscuits dithering — caught off guard.

Did it cross your mind there was once a time
when we both envisaged a different aisle? —
flowers and hymns in a stainglass light
before forests of years sprang up between

and made strangers of us even as the shock
of almost meeting — coming face to face
in that so-mundane too-ordinary place — defined
the gap grown wide. Fate’s poor-taste joke to put us
                                on the spot

so unprepared! Your reaction was to flee
while I stood glued and tongue-tied wishing I’d
said hello or offered just one ‘good to see you’ smile
in casual recognition...

But people change — you loved
the long-gone younger version —
an altogether different shade of me.