2 posts tagged “love”

Orange Sestina

We used to lie in the dark, the trees heavy with oranges.
Out of our houses, through windows we would sneak.
The car had to be pushed down the road, stuck in neutral
waiting for the right moment to start.  Do you remember
giggling and shushing each other, dancing in the shadows
made by the headlights.  We thought we were in love.

She was the first girl who ever used the word love
in reference to me.  I panicked, I pulled an orange
down from the nearest tree and threw it into the shadows.
She frowned and looked like she wanted to sneak
away.  And you came around, do you remember,
and you said that's too bad, your tone so void, so neutral.

Emotions played across my own face, not one neutral
I know.  I think I turned to you then and asked for your love
but I may have just imagined that.  I don't remember
anything clearly except the deep scent of the oranges
in the night.  But you kept close to me and we would sneak
kisses in between jokes and always only in the shadows.

She saw us then, whispering and laughing in shadow
and this time it was her voice that was kept neutral
as she called me a liar and you a whore both of us sneaks.
But we said it did not matter, not because we were in love
or anything like that.  But because it was summer and oranges
were made not for avoiding, but for eating.  Remember?

She left and took our friends with her, do you remember?
She left and we were there, in my car, in the shadows
in the desert, near the canal, deep in the groves.  Orange
peels littered the ground and our hands were far from neutral
as we felt and fumbled and clumisly played at our love.
Later, I think, I laughed at us being called sneaks.

As if we were spies, educated and trained to be sneaks
instead of fools who thought oursleves clever.  Remember?
It would not have been so bad had we had truly been in love,
I think but we did not learn.  Our affairs last in others shadows
and now I no longer know how to keep my face neutral
when I grow melancholy for the acidic taste of an orange.

Now you speak of me and of love, and ask me again to sneak
through the orange grove and it seems you don't remember
promises we said in shadows:  I do not love you, I am neutral.

Everybody hates Jr. High School.  Even the kids who were popular or thought they had it all figured out hated Jr. High at one time or another.

I entered Jr. High shortly after my twelfth birthday and hated it immediately.  I was shorter than a lot of the other boys, and pudgier.  I did not really know anyone as most of my friends from elementary school were either at a different school or in a different town.  The classes were boring and the teachers seemed determined to make me talk as much as possible, when I just wanted to be left alone in the bac of the class with a good book.

And then, there was Debbie.  We were students together at a local martial arts school.  She out-ranked me and could have kicked my butt pretty easily if she had ever decided she felt like it.  We had a habit of hanging out with each other at tournaments and after class and I really liked her.  However, I figured that she would never even be willing to talk to me at school.  Where, you know, other kids could see us.

So, when she walked up to me with a folded up note during that first week of school, my first response was "Who's this for?"  Figuring she wanted me to pass it on to someone else in my next class.

When she said "For you dummy," and rolled her eyes with that grin as she walked away, well, you could have knocked me down with a feather.  Or just looked at me.

We kept passing notes for most of that year and I even worked up the guts to dance with her at the school dances a few times.  But she moved at the end of the year, about sixty miles down the road, but, when you're twelve, 60 miles may as well be a thousand in a town with no public transportation and limited phone services.  Of course, we kept up a correspondance that lasted, off and on through the end of high school when my family moved and a lot of forwarded mail never found us.

She was never girlfriend because I was too young and too shy and, well, yeah.  But I have always felt that she could have been.

Or maybe just should have been.