She walked in on a hot summer’s afternoon. Her raven-black hair tied neatly into a ponytail, while loose strands were tucked behind her ears. She wore a black skirt with a white and pink top and had a rucksack on her shoulders. She had a bounce in her stride that I still vividly see today (later it would happen that even in a crowded space, I could find her and sense her presence even before she came).
I was alone in class, reading over my notes when she came in, it was the first week of term at university and I wanted to make a good impression on my tutor. I could not help stare at her from the corner of my eye. A soft breeze came in through the open window and the smell of her skin came over me in soft tones. At that moment an inner monologue took place in my head, I wanted so badly to say ‘hi’ but I found myself glued to the seat of my chair. I began to question myself; after all I have never been scared to talk to girls before. I just sat there, a post pubescent teenager on the brink of manhood (I looked more like a prepubescent school boy wearing jeans and a shirt way too big for my skinny frame). I convinced myself that she would never talk to me.
Just then a boy walked in and she turned and smiled at him, my thoughts were-oh the boyfriend. I caught myself. Why did I think that I wondered, as all I wanted to do was talk to a new class mate.
Class began and as chance would have it, she and I were placed into the same group, her ‘boyfriend,’ as well. We had a short icebreaker. She spoke to me as the nightingale’s song and I froze. Of everyone else in the room, in the group, she spoke to me the most, right next to the boyfriend, as I had ‘lovingly’ noted him as being. Yet when he introduced himself and I noted that he let slip that he was single. A flame lit in my heart. I did not understand it. And then she smile at me and I fell in love for the first time.
*************
Two years later I still loved her and she had come to suspect, that my little crush had become more. At this point I was her close friend, her safe place. I was in the library when a guy approached me. He told me he liked her and knew that I was her friend. Never have I ever wanted to rip someone’s intestines out before, but here I stood there calm as a willow in the breeze, raging as Satan inside. I started obsessing on the thought that she would give him a chance, while I was left to stand and watch. When would she notice my feelings for her?
I was the boy who ran the entire length of campus to accompany her to her car.
I was the boy who whispered about her to the stars.
I was the boy came alive in her stare, who grew is hair long to be her Samson.She's my sweetest downfall..I Loved Her first, I Loved You first.
I am the boy “sits talking to the moon.”
She is my priestess and my heart-song.
I went to her that day and found her sitting with her friend. And as I approached she undid her long tresses, time slowed and the warm morning sun came filtering through, trapping my soul in a dream-like haze of ‘how will I ever forget you?’
There I stood on fire, well on my way to the man I was meant to be, with many a girl dreaming to be with me, but only she had captured me. She tore at my heart, ripped it apart, but I didn’t mind, because it was her that did it first. She wrote me letters and braded my hair; her touch was a lullaby to my heart. And I fell in love the second time. I knew she loved me in the only way she knew how and longed to give me more but did not know how. Instead we wait for each other in the winter wonderlands of imaginings.
She is the summer star my winter sky, the nightingale’s song in this emperors soul.
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