She looks at me with
a blank un-seeing stare,
understanding nothing
of what I say,

pink pouted lips
making garish stains
of long-lost youthful
abandon on the ice cream cone.

'Oooooohh!!' .. I flinch at
her schoolgirl laugh,
raucous and incongruous
in 'Caffè Espress'.

I see myself in
a quarter of a century
and wince at my sobriety;
Sod it! I laugh raucously too.