Shelley Lover

from The Memoirs of Lord Byron by Byron, obviously.

Alas, my masters, here’s a pretty plot. Shelley came two days ago, as threatened. The same strange Shelley, he never changes - tall, gangling, hair standing up as if he has just this minute given himself an electric shock, pale but blushing crimson at any embarrassment, talking nineteen to the dozen even as he dashes two steps a time up the stairs of the palazzo to greet me, a book of Greek verse in his left hand, that shrill familiar laugh like the scream of a peacock, eyes like blue bonfires of saints’ bones, red lips always slightly agape, the awkward stumbling rush and peculiar baby-powderish smell of him, that pea-green schoolboy jacket a size too small and his silly sailor trousers flaring out at the ankles. ‘Albé!’ he cried, and then, falling forwards, he kissed me. I recoiled from that kiss. I was right. There was Judas in it.