Back then it was different. The words we spoke had meaning and we wore our hearts on our sleeves and there was no thought for tomorrow for there was only today. Or if we thought of our future, in those still moments between kisses, it was blurred and imperfectly seen and not properly understood.
And honesty was all and fidelity was never a question but only a holy truth. I think it is so for everyone who is young and in love. It is the honesty of lovers, which is not so honest after all. He said things I did not agree with, but I never took issue with what he said. Instead, I stroked his cheek and I asked him to say how much he loved me.
As much as all the vodka in Russia; as wide as the roaming Mongol horde; as deep as the ding-dong well the pussy found itself in, put there by some bad boy called Johnny. I thought he was being crude with his pussy in the well, but it’s a nursery rhyme and he was being cute or silly – it didn’t matter which.
Back then time was something we had too much of. We slept late and read books for days and listened to songs replaying on the record player till we had all the words to memory. And we ate when we were hungry and not by the clock. And we kissed when we wanted and where we wanted and not by the book; the young are allowed as much. But now it’s different between us.
Now we are older and our time is measured out in coffee spoons and supermarket receipts, and doctors’ appointments and end of the month pay cheques. We don’t talk like before, but our words are traded like playing cards, or thrown like knives or stones, or kept back for spite. And we stay together for the kids and there is resentment lying underneath everything we do.
Saturday nights we drink ourselves into oblivion, and empty vodka bottles lie careless around the livingroom, crooked like drunks; and being drunk we find our courage and we call it as it is and we fight, tooth and claw, and there is no mercy from the Mongol lover. And pussy sleeps in her deep dark well, with no Tommy Stout to pull her out – and I don’t mean the nursery rhyme but am being crude, if you get my meaning.
I don’t know how love dies, or if it ever really was. Looking back, it is like a clever and cruel trick, or a trap put down to ensnare the unwary. All those songs playing through our adolescence and we sang along, hymns to love and need, and we believed in what we were singing – now when I hear them on the radio, clearer than memory, I think they mock me.
In his jacket pocket, the day after our first was born, I found a scrap of paper and the name Helen written on it, her phone number underneath and Helen’s red lip-sticked kiss pressed there. Everything after that is meaningless and pretend.
Patricia Ann McNair 
Back then it was different. The words we spoke had meaning and we wore our hearts on our sleeves and there was no thought for tomorrow for there was only today. Or if we thought of our future, in those still moments between kisses, it was blurred and imperfectly seen and not properly understood.
And honesty was all and fidelity was never a question but only a holy truth. I think it is so for everyone who is young and in love. It is the honesty of lovers, which is not so honest after all. He said things I did not agree with, but I never took issue with what he said. Instead, I stroked his cheek and I asked him to say how much he loved me.
As much as all the vodka in Russia; as wide as the roaming Mongol horde; as deep as the ding-dong well the pussy found itself in, put there by some bad boy called Johnny. I thought he was being crude with his pussy in the well, but it’s a nursery rhyme and he was being cute or silly – it didn’t matter which.
Back then time was something we had too much of. We slept late and read books for days and listened to songs replaying on the record player till we had all the words to memory. And we ate when we were hungry and not by the clock. And we kissed when we wanted and where we wanted and not by the book; the young are allowed as much. But now it’s different between us.
Now we are older and our time is measured out in coffee spoons and supermarket receipts, and doctors’ appointments and end of the month pay cheques. We don’t talk like before, but our words are traded like playing cards, or thrown like knives or stones, or kept back for spite. And we stay together for the kids and there is resentment lying underneath everything we do.
Saturday nights we drink ourselves into oblivion, and empty vodka bottles lie careless around the livingroom, crooked like drunks; and being drunk we find our courage and we call it as it is and we fight, tooth and claw, and there is no mercy from the Mongol lover. And pussy sleeps in her deep dark well, with no Tommy Stout to pull her out – and I don’t mean the nursery rhyme but am being crude, if you get my meaning.
I don’t know how love dies, or if it ever really was. Looking back, it is like a clever and cruel trick, or a trap put down to ensnare the unwary. All those songs playing through our adolescence and we sang along, hymns to love and need, and we believed in what we were singing – now when I hear them on the radio, clearer than memory, I think they mock me.
In his jacket pocket, the day after our first was born, I found a scrap of paper and the name Helen written on it, her phone number underneath and Helen’s red lip-sticked kiss pressed there. Everything after that is meaningless and pretend.