A Love Poem

I was just sitting there loitering in the Commons
Waiting for that lady who sells Dippin’ Dots
(I was hungry).
And you came.
Love
Is the word.

Flowing hair black and shiny as the site of an oil spill
With a look on your face, innocent and aloof as the sun rising on it.
You were surrounded by a crowd of faceless people
Sinking in an out of my vision like specks of dust in the fading light.
But not you.
You were a pearl among swine and a goddess among men.
Gold among pyrite, a supercomputer among keychain calculators.
A something among nothings.
You walked right by me
And I almost choked to death on the very air I was breathing.
It was as if all of time itself froze that moment.
Space, too.  As if you walked right by the whole eleven dimensions
And every single string stopped vibrating and stared
Like me.
You were really something.

But then those Dippin’ Dots got wheeled in.
I still curse that.
That bloody vendor of diabetes
And my bloody gnat attention span.
You flopped out of my mind like an abandoned goldfish in a public toilet
My subconscious screaming like the little girl the poor thing belonged to
As I got up from the bench to “obtain” some cholesterol-in-a-cup.
I’ll just call you “Love”
In honor of one thing I don’t have.
Because I never did find your name out.

I probably won’t, now.  I got banned from the Commons, anyway.
All I did was try and sneak away some ‘Dots.
“Attempted theft of edible property.  Failure to follow school policy.  Disruption of the peace.”
I swear, I didn’t mean to hit the lady in the face.
Or run away screaming “YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME I’M THE GINGERBREAD MAN”
Before tripping and spilling my pilferings all over the Vice Principal.
It wouldn’t matter.
But where else would I see you, now?
In my dreams?  Maybe.

But looking back
I’d say it was a good thing.
I will never have to be that robotic student
Staring out the window, as if recording the weather.
“Mr. Gouw,” my teacher will never say, because she will never tap my desk in irritation.
“If today, I were to go senile and base the final on cloud formations
I am sure you would completely destroy the test curve.
Unfortunately, I do not think my mind is ready to cave in on itself.”
I will never have to stare at her, wondering what great wrong I had done her
And more importantly, what the question was in the first place.
And she will never ask “Mr. Gouw, since you are special and need me to repeat the question,
Who was the radical that caused the Reign of Terror?”
I will never say “Love”
Because you will never be on my mind, never distracting me from my studies.
My teacher will never ask “Did you mean Robespierre? Love is French for zero.”
The smart aleck in the back will never yell “Like his grade!”
The class will never explode in laughter
And I will never drift back into my waking slumber.

I will never spend idle nights trying to draw your beautiful face
And scuttling the following morning
To produce a 6,000 word essay on determinism riddled with typos and non-sequitors
And whole paragraphs copied from the Wikipedia.
I will never skip school or dinner or my saxophone lessons
To sit in a quiet room
Contemplating what life would be like without you.
I will never have to go home and stare at the wall blankly, eyes sore and red and dry
Knowing what life is like without you.
I will never have to suffer
Because I won’t know your name
And I’ll never find out.

I won’t know who you are
And I really won’t care very much.
All I will do it sit there on that Commons bench with those Dippin’ Dots
(That I will have bought, by the way)
And think.
But not about you.
Not about the eyes I’ll never see crinkle in a smile
Or the crystal-clear voice that I’ll never hear calling my name
I will be thinking about those Dippin’ Dots, thank you very much.

After all
They might have cost me an arm and a leg, but damn
Love
Is the word.

2007 Anthony Gouw