Ode to my 3rd grade love

what is it that makes you fall for that first crush? It can't based on something that actually occurs in real life...like, you really connected when you first discovered you both have a collection of old bottles. I think it's an image, and you're suddenly inclined to love that image because it's so familiar and strange at the same time. But you've never looked him in the eyes, and you'll never know why the obsession has taken hold of you except for one reason, which is this thing called magnetism. And suddenly, you discover what attraction is. That it's an energy that exists like a bubble between two forces, pushing and pulling, and you can stop it as much as a speeding train can come to a deafening halt.

1st Love Poem

When I sit in my rib-caged desk,

I stare
at chipped away signatures, and puttied hearts.

I scratch some lines with my number 2 pencil,
hoping you'll catch me under your vise
and see that I'm different from the rest.

I know that we're meant to be with each other because
your hair and eyes are shiny brown.
They glow and I've never wanted to hold something so secret before.
Chalk makes cloud and blurs my attention and
I drink your face into my memory
and savor your name.

One day,
after school, I walked to my father's office
dreading the boredom of typing and silence and office carpet smells
that match the office chair and magazine smells.
Before walking through the jingle-belled door,
you were there, with your skateboard, practicing in MY father's business yard.

Hello.
Hello.

Quick. Rush and beating heart, I pass body and go inside,
escaping the whirlwind of desire to another room of desks and chairs.

I think of the doorway and I think of entering it, exiting the outside world of possibility.
There's no wind inside, and
I dream of the Brown again and again.