even repressed Catholic kids with

starkly drawn, 24 font bold lines

still need to color within them

often

feverishly

and in as many places

as possible

we had never felt vital

it was little and silly and young

it also made me

it made possibilities

she fell asleep on my

shoulder in the beanbag

chair we shared to watch

a movie that first

afternoon and when she

woke lines pressed in

her cheek from my shirt

which hangs in my closet

two decades on because

you don’t shove history

into a donation bin

because you grew

I smelled his sweat from a distance

when he entered the class,

drenched in red and flourishing firm smile.

I smirked and notified my heart to stop beating for him,

losing my conscience,

.

.

.

while ending up looking foolishly at him.

You want my first love.

You want my true love.

I could tell you about my first crush.

But I won’t.

Because that isn’t love.

Not where it counts.

So I’ll tell you about a girl.

We met on the first day of kindergarten.

I walked up to her and said “Wanna be friend?” She took my hand, and we've been together ever since. (No, not that kind of toget her, get your mind out of the gutter.) She’s probably reading this and groaning at my cheesines.

But you know what?

I have a stronger bond with her than any crush could ever dream of.

If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

I wish i could describe him with a mustache, a beard. i wish i could say that he had a gentle smile and strong hands. and a deep voice that could make me say or do anything. Sadly, I’m not that type of girl, I guess. Maybe i was to literal and took the term puppy love for what it was defined as.

my first love was at the ripe age of seven. maybe I was a deep child. I’ll never really know my family thought I was indifferent at times. but I think that they thought labeling me would inhibit my growth. my first love was found in a craigslist ad. For that at least i’m glad that it wasn’t a boy. My first love was found in the back of an old beat up pick up truck. Again I'm glad it wasn't a real boy. As I reached my small hands out the old man said warningly, “that one’s a yeller.”

I didn’t listen his eyes warmed me, his eyes told me that he would be my friend that for a while the world would be less lonely. That for a small moment in time things would be okay. Life is delicate for a child. Things are literal. Things that people think are small in the eyes of a child are often times much grander much more explosive. For others, they saw him as merely a dog. An old saggy hound. Somewhat of an annoyance. For me, i saw him as my friend, for the little girl that walked to the pick-up truck he meant more than a creature that couldn’t talk. He meant a friend for times when the world seemed lonely. when girls were cruel and unwelcoming. he meant that things were going to be okay. He meant when my mind ran away with me and my thoughts scattered like broken glass, like beads on the floor, that one day they’d be put back together and the broken seams would be healed. He was my first friend, one of my own, one that i didn’t have to wonder if he merely put up with me because of familial ties. My friend was taken away from me. i still remember that day, for a child it felt like the world was caving in. it felt like the light at the end of the tunnel was too far to reach, to grasp. Little did i know that in pain beautiful things are born, for that’s when I found poetry. without his long droopy ears to listen I found that though not as attentive the paper listened. it sucked the ink up and my words sunk into it. At least it felt like that anyhow. i guess he was my first lesson in heartbreak. He prepared me for life. He taught me that just because you love something/someone it doesn’t mean they stay. Things and people fade away, your love might not, but love isn’t some type of super- holding glue that keeps us together. it’s just a layer in-between. He taught me how i would love just like that man who warned me in the truck, once my heart was entangled, there was no backing out. The heeding would be just noise that hits the air, never that penetrates. he taught me that hope isn’t always unrealistic, broken hearts heal. And broken hearts learn to love again. And hurt is only temporary but soon the pain numbs, soon the pills make the pain wholly go away, and that as time goes on pain is a distant memory. A sort of soft spot that you only feel when it’s pressed. Looking back I never thought that the little beagle with droopy ears might have prepared for more adult heartbreaks. but the little dog named Bailey taught me about life. And i never knew the misspelled scribbled poetry that I wrote in his honor and in my grief, would have been the spark to finding my passion. Frankly i never knew i would heal, and look back at the heartbreak and laugh. It seems so silly to me now. And yet a great part of me still feels like that little girl hugging her beagle, goodbye.

I was young

so were you

my heart was full

of feelings blue;

I loved you

dear, so much

so true; my love

you never knew;

you left me

soon, I felt

the ache, the pain

asleep, awake;

decades passed,

seemed only

a day, but I

cried, lost my way;

you were far,

I felt you

near; my darling

my soul sincere;

the years flew

the feelings

grew, no goodbye

ever, for we two.

i went to the.

i saw him, for the first time in. he’s grown a beard.

he looks strange. different. new.

revived.

i guess we both needed a.

after last summer, when. i remember crying until i was sure

my body had turned into a prune.

you came back from the grocery store with prunes that one time.

i never knew you liked prunes.

i guess there’s a lot of things

i didn’t know.

Ethereal.

The word that comes to mind,

Spiritual,

another for your kind.

Impossible

to hide your light. This world

is culpable,

and, therefore, dark. My girl,

incomp’rable!