Teenagers in Love

by Vikki Littlemore
(Chester, Uk)

I chant superstitious rhymes

and stretch chest muscles; for you,

watch teenagers in the sun,

tangled arms and tongues

at bus stops.

I walk past; thirty-two.



I watch as other girls with bigger breasts

suck the wet lips of disposable men;

the same white light in the sky,

shining like something other than the moon.



In the defragmented, opium flame and glaze of sun,

in the silk-soft gilded green and bird song

of warm and cool afternoon;

gently softened skin exudes the absorbed

heat of the day, skin; soft, lush as the watered grass,

tender under the palm of him, whose palms are

somewhere else, wandering over someone else’s

skin with borrowed caresses, cupping undeserving shoulders,

drinking the evening in ignorance.



On benches or in the burning flare

of back-gardens; next to hosepipes,

trees. Tiny red spiders on thighs.

And we, in garden chairs with pens

blooming and fizzing

with impotence and infernal futility

cup the shoulders no-one will

and wait.