I have witnessed unsolicited exposures
And revisited old faults without closure –
This painted ceiling, slowly stripping off its finishing
To bare its defects, begets nostalgia over

How your name is still a byword for frustration,
Shelved within my innermost synapses;
Like a dog-eared page in an Asian
**** magazine, sound & stiff as an equation.

She smiled,
but only barely,
like it was a secret she didn’t want
you to know.

And for a second,
it felt like the world
might not be so bad after all.