A Poem

Crush

Her name wasn't Dorito, but that's what I'll call her here

to preserve some semblance of childhood innocence.

She was in my gym class, Dorito was, and smelled

so nice to my eleven-year-old olfactory system.

Hyacinths and coffee beans, roasted dark, like

I eventually came to love. And back then I loved

watching Dorito's long blond braid

sway with each of her metered footfalls as we circled

the track. It was incentive enough for my frail

young self to stay close behind and catch her

scent after every few breaths gulped. Was it her

shampoo? Her mother's perfume? A rare disease

that altered her body chemistry in such a tantalizing way?

Pathetic Tantalus was condemned to spend forever up to his chin

in water, beneath delicious fruit hanging just beyond

his reach. The children of Zeus rarely

fared particularly well. And I, pasty, frail,

increasingly uncertain boy, never

caught up to Dorito. I resigned myself

to run along behind and hope

that she might slip, defying Newtonian physics

by falling backward into my arms, and that I

would somehow manage not to drop her.

* * * * *

"Crush" came in response to a conversation about the girl with whom I was naively smitten in sixth grade. How her memory arose, after thirty-one years, baffles me. Memory's strange mix of potency and frailty is ceaselessly astounding. For instance, I remember the black-and-white polkadot bow "Dorito" left behind on the bleachers one afternoon (which I took home, slept with, and sheepishly returned the next day), but not where I learned to ride a bike, nor what my father's voice sounded like.