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THE GIRL YOU'LL NEVER BE

I want love to ride on my shoulders above a Third Street crosswalk
and kiss my hair as the leaves rain all around us
so all the Pi Beta Phis and Tri Delts can see
you don't have to have to be popular to be beautiful.

I long for innocence,
all wrapped up in those brown paper lunch bags my mom drew hearts on,
and a smile like the one I misplaced

somewhere in this crowded college life.

I want to find the girl you'll never be
waiting on the front steps of my fraternity
when I walk home alone from A201.
She'd look at me like my 6th grade girl friend did; she'd say
she loved me
in that 'I'm too young too understand love' tone.

But it's too much to want
love angrily insists I let her be,
sorority girls laugh at my t-shirt
as I cross the street alone;
innocence looks at me with that teary-eyed guilt
and I know now
only perfect people fall in love,
because the dream girl is not on my steps, just you.

Too soon or too late
my tires streak away, leaving a black scar on the sidewalk behind me,
a harsh rubber screech that smells of childhood and of
those red kickball balls we kicked so hard
running the bases until we fell headfirst in the dirt,
when it was still pleasant
to fall.

Tell me again how you don't get these metaphors. We are both
far too weak to understand
anything the other says. We are
so different it's the only thing we still have in common.

And again I'm sitting before bitter poetry at 4:30 in the morning,
where nothing ever works out except the well written ending;
and speaking of endings, speaking of goodbyes, how about now?

Learn more about this author, M. Frederick Voorhees.
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