Until tonight they had been divided,

each the centre of their own universe

and contemplating eternal loneliness

with the heaviness of teenage melodrama.

On the way home, in the snow, she laughed

about the present and the future and the past

because there was so much of it, too much

to comprehend after 15 years on earth.

So she let him hold her hand and laughed instead,

with the snow glistening in her hair.