Laure-Anne Bosselaar: I was twenty then

I was twenty then & remember how in stores,
          tramways or cafés, I’d catch someone’s gaze, 
eyes that took me in &
                                 held me there 
             for an instant. The glint of those stares —
 a flash of mica — offered to me & 
                   just like that, I felt my loneliness 
                                 shatter:
            Everything was light: those eyes & that gaze       
holding me — then, 
                        just as sudden, I 
                                    disappeared again 
            inside the dismissal of a blink. 
 
I’d search again & again for other eyes, other heart- 
            gasping moments to take me in & hold me  — 
it didn’t matter how briefly 
                                    as long as, 
                              for an instant, I was 
                                          held.          
 
                        
 
 
(And yet, with him, when — from across a crowd, table, or
pillow — his gaze took me in & held & held & held me — it
was I who looked away first. Oh, it was I.)
 

‘I was twenty then’ from These Many Rooms (c) 2019 by Laure-Anne Bosselaar. Appears with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.