Romance

When I was ten and she was five,
She wore pigtails and hid her smile
Behind her mother's back when I came to ask
Her to join our neighborhood game
Of kick-the-can.
And when I caught her eye, she ran
Back into her house.
"Sorry," her mother said.

When I was fifteen and she was ten,
She still wore pigtails, though
I pretended not to notice,
Even as she skipped along beside me
As I walked down the street with my friends.
"Where are you going?" she said
In what seemed to me the voice of a mouse.
"Nowhere," I replied abruptly, in a voice so deep
It surprised even me.
"Nowhere sounds fun. Can I come along?"
My friends glanced at me sidelong.
I rolled my eyes and said,
"Get gone."
She skipped away, unfazed, and I watched her,
Ashamedly amused.

When I was twenty and she was fifteen,
I was suddenly amazed by her appearance.
She was going to a high school dance
When I walked by her house.
I desperately wanted to say hello,
But she just seemed so happy, and so young.
I myself felt old, and glum,
That is until she smiled.
The fact that it turned me around so quick
Was frightening--it seemed so much like desire.

When I was twenty five and she was twenty,
We met at a party.
She had a boyfriend
But I myself was single.
The years had chased us down, it seemed,
When I asked her for a date.
A few months later we were together,
Fifteen years later
But certainly not too late.