Me and Wild Boy (5): Trilogy (ELP)

The next morning WB stands in the snowy garden wearing only a pair of jeans - no shoes, socks or shirt (one of his typical dramatic gestures that I initially thought amazing and then found really, really sad).  I am inside with his mum and longing to go home.  She says,  'I love my son, but he'll come to nothing. Don't do anything silly - you've got your whole life ahead of you.'

At home I write WB a letter, tell him I don't love him and I don't want to see him again.  It was a lie as I do love him so much that it still makes me almost sick to think about him, but his intensity and lack of control are really frightening and I am only a kid.

After that he occasionally turns up, often late at night, at my house.  Despite disliking him,  my parents insist he stays as they worry he will have an accident on his motorbike. He continues to say that I am the only person who can save him and that he can make me happy - even at that age I know neither is true.  Eventually when I go away to university he drops out of my life and I hear from mutual friends that he has become increasingly dependent on drink and drugs.

He died some years ago, but I think about him nearly every day.

I sometimes hold it half a sin 

To put in words the grief I feel ; 
For words, like Nature, half reveal 

And half conceal the soul within.