The Boy Next Door

My very first crush
was on the boy next door.
I was six, and he
was way bigger than me;
almost seven ...
and ‘the quarters’.

His face – ever
besmirched
with brown splodges,
I remember,
which, on reflection,
were freckles, except

I used to think
he never washed,
and how I envied him.
Our mum was obsessed
with cleanliness.
‘Next to godliness,’
she always maintained,
whatever that meant.

One day, though
his family ‘upped sticks’
to another country;
Christchurch
they reckoned,
but not the one
in New Zealand...
Hampshire, they said,
country...county
what was the difference?

Because I never did
see him again
but I used to think
of him with a kind of
pseudo-streetwise,
scabby-kneed lust –
remained unsated...until
the new boy next door
moved in.