Watching from high windows
Will be my likely end
A tin of peaches Sundays
A funeral now and then
When every cough and splutter
Will sound a trigger pull
Till the spin and click of years
Shall find the chamber full
Till then how every moment
Your words will haunt me still
And as young lovers shared a cafe creme
Not watching us not seeing them
Beneath December skies
We struggled with goodbyes
Still trying to pretend
We’d meet again
Watching from high windows
The red brick rosaries
Fingered or not fingered
By post or milk or keys
I will still remember
Fate shifting like quicksand
My words clumsy as crayons
Held in a child’s hand
Your voice that cracked and faltered
‘My love, you cannot understand...’
And as young lovers shared a cafe creme
Not watching us not seeing them
With tears in our eyes
We told each other lies
You said ‘it’s for the best’
And I said ‘yes’
Watching from high windows
A time when I was young
Ask them and they’ll tell you
I could have been someone
Or maybe someone better
Or just someone better cast
But folding time has creases
That hold us to our past
These dreams of untapped blood
Like blisters trapped in glass
And as young lovers shared a cafe creme
Not watching us not seeing them
When I tried to leave
You reached and held my sleeve
And when I took your hand
You turned and ran