FebulousFebruary 2025: Lost and Found

What do you miss?

What do you miss, she asked I miss spontaneity I said –

The way once we met to share Our lives over steaming coffee Or food cooked with passion Now we meet on a screen

In a blur of pixels

Once we could hug a sad stranger who’d lost her keys and

slipped in the mud

While her dog looked on disturbed and mystified

At humans who don’t sniff each other But share space without thinking

Once we’d dance close

with someone we’d only just met

In a dark room vibrating with baselines Or a tent so full of sweating bodies you had to slide in like a fish

And move with the throbbing crowd Of delicious gleaming skin –

That’s what I miss.

I miss the hugging –

my friend, my sister, my lover.

Let’s do this we’d say

Let’s walk, let’s drink, eat, laugh.

let’s dance and press ourselves close And breath each other’s breath Without thinking, without fear

Of catching something mortal

That could end it all in a moment. That’s what I miss,

That is what I miss

Val (age 72) Herne Bay