Green Dress by Jenny Robb

Before shops eased doors open,
before bars and restaurants
spilled people on streets,
I paused, mask hot with nervous breath,
at the Roy Castle Charity Shop.

There among shoe sweat,
sweet, musty perfume,
the dust of forgotten books,
was my jade green dress with sweetheart neck,
forty-seven years old and looking new.

Oh I loved how it clung
to my young body,
its colour drawing green
from my hazel eyes.

Oh how it pranced
through parties and discos,
attracting drunken snogs and fumbles.
I long to try it on,
mould it to my life now.

It would not fit.

I blink,
the mirage is gone.

About the Author:
From Liverpool, Jenny has been writing poetry seriously since retiring. In 2020 she has poems in: Writing at the Beach Hut; Nightingale & Sparrow; As Above so Below; Poetry and Covid; An Insubstantial Universe Anthology, (Yaffle Press), Bloody Amazing Anthology, (Yaffle and Beautiful Dragons Press) & forthcoming anthologies Lockdown, (Poetry Space); The Language of Salt, (Fragmented Voices) and Geography is Irrelevant, York Spoken Word (Stairwell Books).