*** 101
by Michael R. Burch

That day the late spring heat
steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus
crawling its way up the backwards slopes
of Nowheresville, North Carolina ...

Where we sat exhausted
from the day’s skulldrudgery
and the unexpected waves of muggy,
summer-like humidity ...

Giggly first graders sat two abreast
behind senior high students
sprouting their first sparse beards,
their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ...

The most unlikely coupling―

Lambert, 18, the only college prospect
on the varsity basketball team,
the proverbial talldarkhandsome
swashbuckling cocksman, grinning ...

Beside him, Wanda, 13,
bespectacled, in her primproper attire
and pigtails, staring up at him,
fawneyed, disbelieving ...

And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her,
as she twitched impaled on his finger
like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes,
I knew ...

that love is a forlorn enterprise,
that I would never understand it.

Keywords/Tags: first, love, ***, lust, passion, desire, school, bus, foreplay, *******, odor, musk

sixteen years old
experiencing things i didn’t know i remembered
like arguing and calls to police
hushed whispers and calling whoever you can
not for them to help
just to get some advice
you don’t want to be a burden
and finding things you didn’t know you wanted until you got them
falling
hard
for a girl you know shouldn’t belong to you
and thinking for the first time
that she is worth a broken heart
that you’ve had this chance before but never have you wanted it
she’s worth more than you think she understands
she makes you slow down in a way most people can’t
and i’ve got trust issues like anyone else
but there’s that captivating feeling in her
that made me trust blindly
from one spur of the moment conversation
you don’t understand
i’ve written poetry about my unrequited lovers before
never have i understood the way the reciprocation would make me feel
i’m stumbling in what this is
inexperienced
she’s pretending to stumble with me because she thinks i’m worth it
i’ve never felt more worth it
but she’s no klutz
she’s a catch
in a simple sense of perfection
i told her once that she was good
in the simplest sense of the word
that she was the idea of it, the concept of all things encompassing positivity
she lets me say things like this to her
and understands the power behind the words “thank you” when you don’t know what else to say
that it speaks volumes when you’re speechless
in a way that i don’t
i have this difficulty keeping my mouth shut
thinking before i speak
she has this way of making me think
usually on my feet
that she’s had from the moment i met her
long before i could predict that i would fall for her
long before i would be oblivious to her doing the same
i realized
this is going to end badly
i realized
one of us is going to come out of this very, very beaten down
and she has her way of making me think
i thought
and i concluded
if we must i hope that it’s me
because from the moment i met her
i knew we could bounce off of each other
in unspoken words and hand squeezes
from the first conversation we had i knew
this is someone you trust with your favorite book as soon as you meet them
this is someone who writes in it like you have
in a black pen
and as you’re reading it back
you realize you are falling for her in this unfamiliar way
that you want to hang on to every word she says
that you want her to know how much you don’t know how to put into words
you want her to know that you still remember what she was wearing the day you first met
and you thought “oh. she’s cute.”
and when you tell her this
you’ll laugh when she tells you she thought the same thing as you
that she knew this was inevitable
i know there’s a lot inevitable about it
but i hope i’m the one who ends up hurt
because this is selfish
and this is not fair to her
and despite that
i never want to see her broken
especially not in pieces that i don’t know how to fix
for now
i can try to put aside this idea of oblivion
and live in
live on
experiencing things with her i never knew i wanted to
and always, always wanting to make her laugh
showing her songs that look like her voice
the synesthesia makes it hard to convey
but it’s like paints on a black canvas
mostly this beautiful blue
with purple undertones
like their own variety of northern lights
when she laughs
this shot of neon green shoots through it
i don’t write poetry often anymore
but she’s worth another attempt at it
she’s worth everything i never knew i had
and i’m not in love with her yet
but i’m getting there
she sleeps in later than i do in the mornings
i’ll never show her this
but i’ll try to have something for her to wake up to
whether it’s a meme or a song or anything else
i must emphasize
she’s worth the time put into selecting it

all I’m saying is that some days it feels like the emptiness between us has seen
the beginning and end of the world.
revolutions and extinctions.
our births and our wedding days.

but this morning it feels like it was last night.
like you are still close enough to touch.
like love still lives in our bones.

i have rehearsed for days like these.
my heart has reinforced its fault lines
the tears have made maps of emergency exits
and my spine has shifted to carry this weight...

but even now, 64 days on, a single memory of the
us
that was
we
sends tremors through my veins.

i still don’t know
what to do
with my hands.

What’s the difference between *** & making love?
& can you make love to strangers?
And make it so beautiful that it
Still wakes them up at night sixty years later?
Even if you didn’t know her first name?

his heart flowed from his fingertips
as he stood in front of the choir.
when the applause started,
an angel only visible to her
crowned him with a halo.
her heart saw the purest,
whitest light as it ascended.
every cell in her body knew
one truth in that moment -
this was the start of her first love.

I’m not as sweet as the candy you once loved
I’m not as lovely as that flower on the gardener’s glove
I’m not as interesting as the changing color of autumn leaves
And I might not be the person I may seem

I’m not too good with words
I can’t speak what my mind tells me to
I’m not that beautiful
So you might replace me too
I can’t do well in school
But I try my best to

I might not be the one for you
But I just want to tell you
I really like you