I wrote a love poem once
to no one.
Not a real girl.
Not somebody in algebra.
Not the one from the rink,
or the one with the red scarf,
or the one who smiled at me in line and ruined two days.
No.
This was worse.
It was for the whole idea of being wanted
in that perfect feverish way
songs had taught me to expect.
I wrote about eyes I had not seen,
hands I had not held,
some invented midnight where the air was just right
and the whole world had the decency
to shut up and let two people mean it.
I wrote like my life depended on a girl
who did not exist outside the page.
The poem was terrible.
Earnest as a knife wound.
Full of moonlight and forever
and all the giant words young people use
when they have only brushed the edge of a thing
and want credit for drowning.
I knew it was bad even then.
That did not stop me.
I think bad poems are part of the toll.
You write your way through a swamp of them
hoping one day to come out somewhere honest.
What embarrasses me now
is not the poem.
It is how badly I wanted it to be true.
Not the girl.
The feeling.
That clean dramatic collision
where somebody sees the whole wreck of you
and not only stays
but steps closer.
I had not learned yet
that love is not usually written in one bright streak
across the sky.
Most times it comes in looking smaller,
less dressed up,
and you miss it
while waiting for the orchestra.
Still, I kept the poem a while.
Folded in the back of a notebook.
Proof that I had once been ridiculous enough
to believe a blank page
might call somebody into being.