PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

That day in early autumn, during fifth

period English class (seventh grade) you slipped

your shoes off:  midnight blue socks not entirely

concealed by baggy denim bell-bottom jeans'

tattered cuffs.  Ancient Mrs. B---, teacher,

failed to notice this conspicuous defiance of the

dress code in the Student Handbook that you were

perpetrating subversively before us.

She called upon you to distribute the printed

outline to the lecture, and I watched you

glide around the classroom, through the rows of

desks, a distinctly satisfied smile on your face,

framed on either side by cascades of soft, auburn

curls (shoulder length, also a deviation from the

code, and your parents had already refused to

compel your compliance with a happy barbers' shears).

Suddenly, I began to feel a compelling desire for you;

as the prejudiced and restrictive inhibitions that

society had imposed upon me fell away, like so many

burdens breaking apart, so many walls collapsing or

toppling over.  By the time you drew near to deliver

my copy, the tingling in my groin was both exquisitely

pleasant and almost unbearable.  You paused for a

moment as you passed by me; our eyes met; something,

unable at that time to be articulated, hovered

between us.  That year, we, as seventh graders,

attended only a few of the same classes:  through the

next five years, even less, so that by our Junior and

Senior years, I never saw you at all in the corridors.

Just before graduation, you reconnected with me,

despite the radical difference in our social circles

(yours, the popular kids; mine, less a circle and

more an ellipse, the nerds, bookworms, and the

entire memberships of the slide rule and chess clubs).

You still disliked shoes, even more militantly than in

seventh grade.  You agreed that the need to love and be

loved exists according to the soul's nature, and is not

governed by parental or societal expectations.  Our

birthdays, coincidentally, were only nine days apart,

straddling the date of our graduation ceremony.  Our

achievement of legal adulthood was rapidly approaching.

We enjoyed disco music---perhaps more than our closest

peers found reasonable.  Now, we are dancing together

(despite certain disapproving stares) on the main,

iridescent floor of our local discotheque; and I am

amazed the way the very light will cling to your

socks (again, midnight blue), the way I will later;

your shoes conveniently abandoned beneath our table.

Starward

[*/+/^]