Late Love
We met against the odds
as a door shut gently on your prime.
And me? I was five short years behind.
I glimpsed, almost touched,
your virile thrust before you softened
much against your will. Now I know
my desperate desire tugged at your loss.
Hurt –
love’s prospect often made you hide
remote and knotted.
Both bewildered,
fraught with singular longings.
Why did our parallel paths
fail to cross when our skin was supple,
our blood hot.
Yesterday, at last,
you told me how you felt
and undefended: I fell in love. Shed
twenty years of straining at the leash
in one connected moment.
Both of us, joined in shared pain.
I understood truths I’d missed
found beauty in our twilit, struggle-led devotion.
We kissed, stroked and warmed our age-thinned blood.
Ceinwen lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. She was Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Chapbook Competition [Spring 2018], won the Hedgehog Press Poetry Competition ‘Songs to Learn and Sing’. [August 2018] and was shortlisted for the Neatly Folded Paper Pamphlet Competition, Hedgehog Press [October 2018]. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University (2017). She believes everyone’s voice counts.
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