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- 06/16/2023
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The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 96. ...the boy smiled at me...
.
At the Roadside Stand
when the boy smiled at me so freshly
the sea parted and a path opened at my feet
I could barely hear his grandfather talking
about garden vegetables
and kept looking at the bristles on the boy’s neck
and at his body and at his hands
they were pale as wax he wore a cheap blue ring
and later when the grandfather got mixed up in his change
the boy counted it piece by piece
scooping it up and lightly brushing my palm
with his fingers
then carried my bag to the car.
his parting smile was ingenuous:
‘behind what seems my eagerness, I’m there,’
it said, ‘waiting.’
and what did I do about that!
I shied as I always do (in haste)
and I groaned as I got in the car for the fool that I was
and I thought of the girl in a few years
who would be under those hands
naturally, his life cutting its groove
and as I drove away I thought of all the time
between going to waste
imagining the boy and I filling it up in hot embrace
not even watching where I was but like a drunk driving.
—John Gill,
1967
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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