You & Me Poem by William Farrant

I was never sure how it turned a profit:
a Friday night and it's just us in the bar,
you and me, the barman cleaning glasses
and trying to look busy. Only your car

on the muddy bit of grass where a sign,
'Patron's Only Parking Please', is hammered in.
Even the optics looked dusty, the upturned
bottles of whiskey, vodka, gin

somehow looking sad as they reflected the flames
from the real fire burning in the grate.
We looked around for somewhere nice to sit
avoiding the corner table with the dirty plates

that looked like they'd been there since lunch.
Finally we picked our spot, sat down,
the charms on your bracelet swaying like the
candlelight. 'Better than those town

pubs, ' you said, 'where you can't hear yourself think.'
We sipped our drinks, bit idly on a snack
and talked about the weather and work and who
was useless in Accounts, and that chap

who'd joined the sales team and had BO.
It was our pattern then, time to unwind,
Friday night at the pub with me drinking vodka
and you sipping your lemonade and lime.

We alternated paying for each round, and as
you brought the replenished glasses back
I watched you walk, I watched your body sway
in that cotton dress, half red, half black.

That was the fork in the road, I see it now.
One way, normality, kids, pushing for promotion,
holidays in the sun, an index-linked pension,
and sex on a Sunday with little emotion.

But somehow things didn't turn out that way,
It didn't last, it wasn't meant to be.
Those evenings in the pub were long ago,
when we were different people, you and me.