It was a wholly unremarkable place,
undeserving of its grandiose name.
Modernist, brutalist, full of mediocre chains.
Midsummer Boulevard –
home of the soulless exchange?

A blatant lie even, one could claim.
For no street, avenue, road, nor lane
can remain
transfixed in time,
like a bug in Perspex,
transfixed in eternal midsummer.

But thy eternal summer, it shall fade,
and one cold November evening found me there.
To hold this unrelenting memory is cruel:
the scared white boy who first cared
too much then not at all.

Who sank into obscurity
despite my best intentions.
Whose silence haunts and hurts
as it slices through the night.

Who held me close on Midsummer Boulevard,
hand pressing gently into the small of my back,
Who waited for me to catch my breath,
for me to feel my ecstasy and that
tumble of fear,
before letting me seek out his lips once more.

It’s still a wholly unremarkable place,
crude concrete concealing
any semblance of creativity.
Yet under the hard paving slabs,
I know,
a suppressed softness aches to be free

To walk that route on Midsummer Boulevard
now is to walk in a memory –
a glimpse of a future,
a glimpse of a life,
a human connection,
not to be.