Polite kisses, not enough
to smudge my lipstick.
A younger man with thin lips
and a leather jacket.
“Are you cold? You can have it. “
There’s enough romance
in the city center at night,
That it even gets under the
skin of a guy who grew up here.
There’s enough moonlight to go around.
Enough street lamps to lean under.
“Are you a boy, or are you a man?”
“I’m not sure, what’s the difference?”
“Well, what do you value?”
“Absolute honesty, even when it hurts.”
“Well, I can’t tell you the precise difference. But one is that a man has an answer to that question.”
“Can I sit closer to you?”
And in the morning he calls me,
Texts me.
What a thing it is,
To be a thing that is wanted.
Alessandra Ranelli 
Give me validation.