An Education
by and published in Edition Ten of Pomegranate
For some reason we were both waiting
for the same bus. You were with a girl,
hard in the other school’s uniform.
I wanted just then to unseam
the whole thing, every last missed hem
from around you, and then somehow
stitch it back together round
my limbs, so we’d be the same.
You were a moment’s half-idea,
a daydream on a passing day.
Only lately I realise how
I wanted your skin, as well as your clothes.
Alex Gabriel
Alex Gabriel is eighteen years old, though not getting much younger. He lives in Oxford where he pretends to study English and German.