What It Was and What It Is
As a rush it began,
the twinkle of your eyes meeting mine,
the softly upturned corners of your lips
as you smiled at something known
only to yourself.
Patronizing it became,
irritating and maddening to know that you,
in all your joy, in all your beauty, in all your wisdom
were forever locked away from me
by decisions
made before
I even knew of your existence.
Fleeting it is,
your dance before me
all smoke, flash, and shadow.
Every moment I realize you are truly gone,
there you
a quote, a song, a laugh, your eyes
teasing and binding me to you again
then gone
Have you ever met someone with whom you know things would spark and function as they cosmically should, only to realize that you are already in a sparking, cosmically-functional relationship? It can be platonic, it can be romantic, it can be simply hilarious, but the time just isn’t right and the chance to pursue said relationship passes before you know it.
Working with adolescents is this every day. It is a limited engagement and then they move on to, hopefully, bigger and better things. They often never return, as much as we wish they would and those chances are like flashes in the pan.
American writer
