One morning in high school
my first period Spanish 3 class
had just started and I saw
my crush looking at me
and smiling.
I’d never even talked to her,
but her assigned seat
was next to mine
so I strutted over
like a model on a runway
while meeting her gaze.
Only cool dude McCoy
wasn’t too cool
on this particular mañana
since when he sat
at his tiny little desk
with its little
swinging arm desktop
too small for a gnome,
he leaned a little
too far forward on it
and did a face plant
into the Berber blue carpet.
I thought for sure I’d died
in a gush of concussion
and nose bleed
until I looked back at my love,
my feet looking for a tree branch
to hook onto in the air
beside her laughing face,
her teeth long and demonic
like The Nun.
A pulsating contradiction,
I wanted to be adored and
invited to a sacred place
for a secret rendezvous
with an almost holy love
I believed no one would or
could ever take from me
by making a false impression,
though I was making one.
Without her jealous friends
and family lying to her
about how unhappy
she would be with me
it wouldn’t matter if I was hot,
or able to command a room
with a back shot,
or able to shoot
a starry-eyed glance
across someone’s hormone
so sharply,
their genitals would weep.
I would be the most beautiful
thing she’d ever sat next to.
Then about a month
after that humiliation,
I had another crush and
while playing footsies with her
underneath a table in the library
her face and clavicle
started shining, almost glowing.
She could have been
an angel in disguise.
I wrote this one thinking about this single life I’ve been living these last 16 years following my divorce, and because I’ll often approach a subject through its contrary, I decided to write about how an early high school crush didn’t go so well, and see if that could be drawn into my initial subject of being voluntarily single now. It’s funny to me, how, even as I write this and think about the latter writing move, I’m punning myself with the idea that opposites attract.