We started in seventh grade,
When our ancient, grumpy teacher
That no one liked decided to give
Our second hour science class
Assigned seats.
By some great happening of fate,
I was placed next to you,
The loud, obnoxious prankster,
And I, the quiet, shy nerd.
The class at first was torture,
Yet soon became my haven.
A+ lab partners we were,
And soon A+ friends.
Though outside the classroom,
We were nothing.
We had our own friends, our own lives;
Until sophomore year, when you
Caught me coming out of the library,
John Milton in my hand.
Words were said, promises were made,
And the next day I had your hand in mine,
And we were something.
Two weeks later, under the light of trillions of stars,
On the top of the car you “borrowed”
From your strict father,
You kissed me, slowly, tenderly, lovingly,
And I felt true happiness for the first time.
On graduation day,
You caught my graduate cap,
The sun rays making beautiful patterns
On your tan face, and wavy hazel hair,
But you spun around and gave it right back to me,
To leave me for a college in California,
Thousands of miles away, away from everything
You’ve ever known.
And loved.
I tried to get over you, I really did,
But my mind circled the same tracks,
Went over the same ruts,
And I always came back to seventh grade,
When that cranky teacher gave us our
Assigned seats.
I blamed him, thinking that those
Assigned seats were the beginning of
My broken heart.
It wasn’t until four years later,
That I saw you in a library,
Hiding in the shelves, peeking through
The bookends you moved yourself,
That I realized that those feelings never left.
You had come back for me,
And those bean bags in the kids’ section
Of the library became our new assigned seats.
One day, about a year later, you didn’t take your seat;
You went down on your knee instead.
The wedding was casual, yet beautiful, as you said
I was in my light blue dress and beaming smile.
Our seventh grade science teacher sat in the front row;
The seat we assigned to him.
A week later, he went to the seat that
God assigned him, and we were back in that church,
And this time I was in a black dress and crying.
Years passed, and suddenly I found myself
In front of a classroom of my own,
Assigning seats to my own seventh graders.
The quiet, shy nerd shot me a desperate look
As I set her books down by the loud, obnoxious prankster.
I saw my own fear reflected in
Her eyes, and I simply smiled calmly at her.
Maybe some day she will be as
Happy as I was that I was given my
Assigned seat.
