She devised a meeting ‘just as friends' 

Evening drinks in her favourite bar 

(Soigné and the food is good) 

Her finely plaited ribboned hair 

Smelled of woody sandalwood. 

 

[Women's yoga was the excuse she used 

to fool her husband, ‘estranged' (or so she claimed) 

But in her mind was ‘union’ with me  - a different kind] 

 

She said I had to walk her home, 

“The streets are deadly, dangers lurking everywhere.” 

 

She chose the cycle track route back 

I trotted along beside 

And in a dark space where lamps' light 

did not meet  

she stopped and kissed me  

unexpectedly. 

 

She filled my mouth with a probing tongue  

then drew back, brushed long black hair from her cheek 

bashfully dipped her eyes and simpered,

“I love you… 

I love you… 

I love you”  

 

The most beautiful woman I had ever seen

This unbelievably wonderful being loved me? 

I drowned in her eyes…I was hooked. 

  

Not mother, not wife, nobody 

Outside coital ecstasy 

Had ever said that to me. 

“I love you”  

And I was hooked. 

  

We kissed again at the path's end 

And I to my dark solitary house 

And she to her husband (estranged)  

returned. 

  

I should have run away  

Like Joseph from Potiphar's wife 

I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! 

 

But I was hooked. 

  

Unholy places we sanctified with our coupling

As we feasted on each other 

Anywhere feasible  

and sometimes not. 

Feeding the insatiable worm within with all we had  

Our very selves – our souls.  

 

We lusted in hotels,  

and seedy b'n'bs  

knee trembling in alleyways,  

against garage walls by necessity. 

 

A carriage on the Settle to Carlisle 

swaying and rattling 

me, us and the train. 

 

And naked, deep in a bush,

on the Cleveland Way  

properly dressed seal spotters rambled past  

looking the other way, they 

missed more than bobbing heads at sea. 

 

I offered my heart on a silver charger 

She held it aloft like

A Burn's Night trophy haggis to be lauded  

then sliced,  diced, chewed and excreted 

 

Or an enemy head staked high on a city wall.  

  

She said her heart was mine too,  

But that was “strictly entre nous”.   

No one must ever know 

Especially not her husband (estranged)  

“There was nothing to be gained”. 

   

But after my three best moves  

And both favourite positions failed to satisfy  

the frisson flattened and frustrated 

She sauntered off  

Hunting another that  

Might…just… satisfy the worm within. 

 

Keeping my heart 

Locketed, closeted, festering.

  

I begged her to return my heart  

Give it back to me 

Give it back.  

Please,  

She, imperiously, 

“It is not your heart now – it's mine – you gave it willingly” 

  

Eventually, 

Like a banqueting roistering nobleman might, 

Carelessly, half-heartedly chucking a bone  

to a hungry hound 

She threw a heart piece to the ground 

and nudged it to me with her shoe.  

 

“There's enough there – it'll do…for you” 

  

Unlike devoted long married couples,  

Old conjoined souls who die in swift order 

The second before the first is even cold  

Life is never complete for the young  

with a busted soul and half a heart  

who are denied easy passing – 

the release that  

that sweet, gentle,

good night brings. 

 

The wages of sin ain't death 

But a torment far far worse 

  

Long life with unquenchable thirst.