14 of 30, Poem-A-Day, "Be Mine"
Be Mine
As the last few notes of the school bell
echoed in my ears, I watched you
emerge from the girls’ bathroom
with two of your friends in tow,
you laughing, them smirking.
After a beat, you placed it in my palm,
the Valentine’s Day card I’d bought for you.
I looked down into my hands
and saw a miracle of considered cruelty:
most of the lower-right corner
of the front of the card charred,
my offering burnt and then returned to me.
The bird in my throat tried to fly away at first,
but then decided instead to head down to my gut
to look for a safe place to nest for the rest of the season.
I had given much thought to the card,
to how I would walk up to you,
what I would say to you.
That whole morning my words
spoke themselves aloud, in my head,
like I was memorizing the verses to a hymn.
Like a fool, I even practiced standing up straight,
and that first step towards you
with only minutes to go before the next class
wasn’t anything at all if it wasn’t a kind of leap of faith;
I tried not to hear the pathetic fear in my own voice as I said,
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Carrie, here, this is for you.”
Now I stood there, in the hallway
between the midday classes,
trying to figure what to do with myself.
I stood there wondering if you and your friends
predicted an explosion of weakness,
or maybe a show of tears.
I couldn’t decide if what you had done
proved how thoughtless a person could be
or if it showed a profound amount of creativity.
Since then I’ve wondered from time to time
if you treasured the look that must have played across my face;
the humiliated suitor, trying as hard as he could
to become something harder than stone then,
something hard enough to lock his lips in place
so no emotion could possibly betray him.
You were so terribly pretty, beautiful in my eyes
and I knew you smoked cigarettes and I didn’t care.
I knew your friends smoked as well,
and I wondered whose lighter was used
to set my crush on fire.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
April 16, 2009 by Rich Boucher.