Enough

A barbecue and swim after work had brought us together

around the campfire that summer evening,

An impromptu thing teenagers do best:

You bring the beer. I’ll bring the chips.

I watched her run up from the water laughing.

As I write this her name comes back to me: Yvonne.

Fresh from her swim she stood close to the fire

in her tiny yellow bikini

drying her sheet of waist-length onyx-coloured hair with a towel.

She seemed so utterly assured of herself in the task at hand,

so composed for a young girl,

tossing her head languidly from side to side

then taking a large hounds tooth comb and slowly pulling it through

that glorious hair of hers.

She must have known we all followed her every move,

couldn’t help but know it by the silence

that had enveloped her ritual,

the flames casting an unreal glow on that hair,

and that perfect form and face.

The men particularly stared in awe

at this goddess from Okinawa who’d ended up

in our backwater of all places, in their midst.

I watched the men’s faces watching her,

knowing even at 16 I would never possess the audacity

that was Miss Yvonne Tsubone’s that night,

and for as long as it lasted,

the kind that comes from sheer and absolute physical beauty,

a calling card that says without words:

I am perfect just as I am:

what I am is enough.