Affair

Banal and predictable they would call our

Great love affair

Great and love, spat out with an ironic superiority

As though their own lives meant so much more

When they compared themselves with us.

We are those contemptuous souls who dared to let our boredom

Splash about on the other’s malaise.

There were moments of drama, heightened emotion and angst

But generally just a vague pleasure of a shared word

And the provocation of joint debate.

How can something so mundane

as the simple need to soothe another’s pain

Be so easy to mis-define and categorise as wrong?

When the world skids around and you find yourself living the life

That suits another skin

When you crave a moment that is just about your soul within

Is it so wrong to reach out to another who needs to be seen

Beyond the words that do not recognise who he once had been?