Morning

Before the first kiss, before the days and the nights of togetherness I was alone, and on a trip to London visiting a friend. I remember thinking of him always, calling him with a calling card and buying new clothes there that I thought he might like to see me in, clothes that could quite possibly change his mind. One night we went to the theatre and a boy there showed interest in me. It seemed like a good way to get even with the him at home for not loving me yet, so the boy and I went to a pub. Wasted drunk we walked through London at 2am, through streets unfamiliar and dark and then finally a park where the boy thought it would be brilliant to take off his clothes. I kept walking and thinking of one who would never do something like that to me, lost and loving him and wishing he loved me. I was 20, young and alone with a vague excited feeling to be on an adventure, the true notions of the evils that could have befallen me hovering somewhere just outside of my consciousness. I walked and walked some more, the tube stations were closed when it made perfect sense to me that they would run all night. I stopped at an internet cafe and emailed him a poem that I didn't write, but pretended I did. Even now at times when I am alone the last line echoes back to me, true and pleading with a clarity in its desperation - 'If there is a place further from me, I beg you, do not go."