old "sid" close to bones...

they met in high school orcherstra class his junior year.
after a brief exchange she told him
“You Suck!”
and he fell in love.
she was a free spirit, a flurry of shattered glass.
two years they barely spoke,
but she softened so much to admire his cello.
“So Shiny!”

a field trip/concert a month before his graduation,
she noticed his loneliness, and they spoke.
he was getting a job at speedway.
she drove a truck.
he didn’t drive.
he was getting a chapbook published,
“Thoughts,” he was calling it.
“That’s cool.”

(the Publisher never rePlied.)

and he went home, with a collection of Collins:
“Sailing Alone Around the Room,”
and a collection of Poe, which he’d bought.
he felt alive, like a dying fish
learning to breathe.
it took a few days to gather the strength
to say Hey.
she smiled, said hey and gingerly hugged him.

Graduation night, he gave her his number
at the end of a letter,
slipping it neatly into her hands.

several days later he found a wedding ring
lying crumpled in the road
by a rummage sale.  It went unclaimed.

she never called.