i wanted so bad for you to love me
as i loved you;
in the way that never falters,
never wavers, no matter how hard i try to stop it.
i look at you and wonder what would happen
if i could just take that step forward,
looked you in the eye,
and confessed it all.

i have made many mistakes,
but there are none i regret
quite as much as those i made with you.
i pushed you away because i never thought
that anyone like you could look at anyone like me
for the right reasons.
in your sweet words i saw something more:
a starry-eyed sixteen-year-old so easily swayed,
small, fragile, so easy to manipulate.
i slammed the door shut on all we could have been
because i was too afraid
of letting the wrong person in.
and while i waited again for your knock at my door,
i wondered if i must first invite you back.

my knock was so soft i thought you wouldn’t hear,
but the handle turned and my heart skipped a beat.
with an unsure smile i turned to face
a blue-eyed reminder that i was too late.
i swore to myself i would forget about you,
let you be happy with whomever you choose,
because maybe all i ever wanted was for you to be happy,
not for your heart to be mine.

to my surprise, after many months had passed,
it took confessing my feelings to find a path
that would lead me to forgetting you
and all of the things we could never be.
i was no longer tied to my missed chance,
and once again my heart was opened
to the world ahead.

oh, but my silly reader,
did you think it ended there?
when i cleaned up the pieces i left one behind,
and in the dense air of fall
i listened as he sang the words to a well-loved song.
he fell so deep into the music as i fell so deep into him,
and just like the orange streetlights hanging overhead,
the spark i had lost flickered back to life.

so now i will start all over again,
wondering if my missed chance
will come knocking again.