We are waiting
at the foot of the stairs.
All afternoon
you have been hidden from sight
as women fidget with your hair,
paint your face with the latest brands
to make you more beautiful
than you already are
but say you are not.

The boy you have chosen
for tonight, this season, this life,
fiddles with his wrist,
impatient as the clock scuttles
towards seven, when you’ll
and he’ll be free.
The evening unfilled,
but no doubt dancing
will be involved, a kiss
under the lights.
What you could be doing
may keep me up half the night.

I shall not judge him.
I know his folks
and they’re good people.
I think over dinner once you said
he was on the basketball team.
A Bulls fan if I recall.
We don’t speak much.
He is merely doing what I once did,
eyes on the time,
suit and tie and the shimmer
of gel scraped through the hair.

When you arrive
the obligatory pictures are taken.
A smile, wide, a drizzle
of jewellery, a cyan dress.
He’s beaming, and why wouldn’t he.
Goodbyes charged with meaning
flicker in the room like lazy moths.

It’s seven when you depart
and on the sofa in the front room
I know this is the beginning
of the end, when you’ll say to me
you are no longer a kid
but of course, we both know,
you haven’t been for a long time.