After You were Mine

I wondered what happened

after  you were mine.

but. no.

not mine

not as shrewd as belonging, not as finite as possession –

rather I

borrowed you, for a while,

but

less like a replacement for some faulty appliance,

more like a treasured acquisition – a tome,

housed in a library somewhere I’ll never visit but might think of

on some idle morning as the kettle boils and

letters drop forlornly to the mat

and I catch myself … sometimes … I’m

thinking – on a rainy weekend or a broken Tuesday

which seems fit for little else –

wondering where you are, and who’s borrowed you now

who’s inhaling the scent of your pages and adding a sentence or two.

in a cursive script,

much neater than mine.

I remember the shape of you, sketch the illustration, but blur the edges

imagine a Technicolor version, where there was really

a limited palate

as limited as my own

at that time.

but we painted each other in primary tones,

stuck to the lines

caring nothing for the shades and the scribbles that would follow with time

and with age.

I kept you intact, for a while,

painstakingly guarding your covers then

passed you on

a good sport

to someone else, who could decipher your wisdom,

a specialist in text I couldn’t read any more

after you were mine,

I wondered.

who you’d lent yourself to

and hoped his hands were clean

-   Stuart Crowther

(April 2005)

This poem is very special for me. I just happened to stumble upon this poem while researching short films about the gay community, which I was intending to make a short film about. I ended up watching the video below and repeatedly playing the end part where the poem was.