Grandmother
Grandmother, you gave so well, much better than you received
Keeping the happiness that behind you leave
To your sad parting we give this final plea,
May you rest in peace this night
Good sister, mother, friend and wife
In your fierce strength we all believed
You gave so well, much better than you received
Frail life, when last I saw you lay, without gown of lustful light
Too late for tears or sorrow, or talk of would or might or morrow
Though we stay on and wake to fight, you go where we must follow
May you rest in peace this night
Your spirit’s flight
Leaves us in the wake of the bereaved
For you have gone to your final retreat
Where nevermore your eyes shall burn so bright
From when you gave so well, much better than you received
Your life was not a sonnet, though no less beautiful or brief
You never cut words to form or fashion, not even in the least
You held your pains in check of silence
Refusing all but grief
You always did what you knew was right
May you rest in peace this night
But hark Grandmother I will remember thee
Your clock, your candles, pale pictures and Paris scene
Indeed I've held your hands in mine
Like great and fallen trees of knotted branch and bark
Frail legacy of touch whispering of a time I shall not grieve
When you gave so well, much better than you received
Grandmother, you gave so well, much better than you received
Now bless our tears, our feast of life, from that far off distant height
And let us all pray together Grandma
That you rest in peace this night
Monday, February 23, 1998
Grandmother
Monday, December 29, 1997
Au Coeur de Paris
Au Coeur de Paris
Ma fenêtre donne sur une petite cour
Au coeur de Paris
A deux pas tourne le Moulin Rouge
Qui mélange et confond à juste titre
Touristes, voyeurs et pervers.
Comme la vitrine d'un grand magasin
Au coeur de Paris
Le monde s'étale devant ma fenêtre
Toutes les langues et tous les goûts à prix unique.
Toute l'humanité passera tâtonnant devant ma fenêtre
Le coeur grand ouvert sur Paris.
C'est un défilé d'amour et de dégoût
Le désir et la déception à chaque tournant de rue.
Ma fenêtre donne un regard
Au coeur de Paris
Et je n'y vois ai-je peur
Que mon propre reflet.
Saturday, April 12, 1997
When You've Lost That Something
When You've Lost That Something
(Bob Dylan Friends)
When you've lost that something
That ace in the hole
That snap-crackle pop in your breakfast bowl
That well worn lucky charm rattlin' round in your pocket
That extra jolt of juice that a rainy day won't stiffle
And that you thought you could pull from an ordinary socket
Or from the King James version bible
And when you've searched and sought
In every crease and closet
For that something that you had but later lent or lost it
Or maybe you never owned 'cause it wasn't to be bought
When that yellow brick road you were runnin
Is losing it technicolor glow
Like the patent of a tan after a long summer sunnin
And you've chased the end of the rainbow
To find it ain't got no pot
Or maybe the glitter you were chasin just ain't what you thought
When you've cooked up your last deal
Cause you lost that secret ingredient
The thing that makes Coke real
And that Pepsi wants to steal
That final powdery pinch
That culinary expedient
That special sauce and feel
That G-Love's music's got
That little extra something that turned your life from bland to hot
When you can't find that extra pound
To go overtime one last round
When your everyready isn't
And your meter's running low
And your stuck in pedestrian traffic
And the fast lane's moving slow
When your loafers have lost their penny
And your bounce has left you static
When your get-up and go is gone
And you know you're lost and done
If you don't find it fast
And do it all over again
for a quarter
And inflation's got you down
And you can't find it at the bottom of a beer
that you bought for the price of four
And you don't overhear it in that pub
Or in some pep-rally cheer
You can't sweat out in a club
Or read it in a book up on a shelf
No, you just can't find that thing
No matter where you look
When life has turned Picasso
And the Grand Master's lost it too
And all you see is stalemate
Cause you and the red-headed Swede are thru
And when that moveable feast that you're livin
Is come to an end and done
And the day is no longer driven
By joy and laughter and fun
Then I say the only place you can turn
Is to two guys named Jeff and J
And maybe I've got it all wrong
But it seems that this is true
That friends are the best and only way
To keep from turnin blue
Sunday, March 23, 1997
Frida
Frida
I find myself best in you Frida
And so I pledge my allegiance
to your patriotic beauty:
to your harvest hair falling
to your fair features white
And to your shy in the sky eyes
holding back but the weakest shade.
Frida, my beautiful baltic affirmation,
you fly the colors of my desire.
It began as a piece of cake
Too present perfect, like your icy accent
(I never thought I would have you too).
You were à la mode after dinner
A sweetness that lingered till morning
A pie I was willing to have in my face.
Smoking into my pores;
At work I sweat with your memory
Absently dropping cups and glasses
Losing myself in your bouquet.
We have a few laughs
Then you play Humpty Dumpty on my heart
In a country without queen.
I lay and wait for a young Saint Nick
Fat on Swedish meatballs
To go back north,
So I can put the pieces back together.
Now I sit doubled over in love
Committing romantic Hari Kari;
Like a peddler of cheap clichés
Trying to sell you my pain.
And all I can do is reach for you
Through these bars of broken verse
Trying vainly to span the distance
to overcome the balance of injustice
and Saint Nick’s perfect part.
Doing time in a café outside your flat
I hope to catch a glimpse of you on the way to the metro;
My whisky blind eyes read hope
Like sunlight waiting behind clouds.
In the morning I awake shivering in wait
For this frigid front to blow over.
I'm not sure who is more puzzled,
You or I
Whose heart breaks again every day
Yet still joins you every night.
I’ll believe for the both of us.
It's not the same old music,
It's Ave Maria.
And whatever the song
I'm ready to sing.
Wednesday, December 18, 1996
Tu es toujours là
Tu es toujours là
J'ai tant rêvé de toi
Que je ne veux plus me coucher.
Je n'en veux plus de ces réveils déçus,
Etreints par ton esprit fuyant et impénétrable.
Les jours s'en vont
Seuls dans le temps;
Tantôt à une lenteur grisâtre
Qui présagent la longue nuit à venir
Tantôt allègrement vite,
Mais jamais sans que je ne songe à toi.
Comme l'ombre d'un albatros,
Indolent compagnon de voyage
Ton souvenir me suit partout.
Je sens ta présence sous mes pas.
Je vois ton image dans les regards des passants.
Tu es toujours là,
Je te devine près de moi.
Mais je suis las de te chercher.
Je m'enfuis sûr de te retrouver
Dans la solitude intime de ma chambre
Et dans la poésie que tu hantes.
Friday, October 4, 1996
Three Card Monte
Three Card Monte
(a rookie error)
Of course you see
the pitches are tempting,
but you've been scouting,
Waiting, watching,
Eyeing the field.
Strong and sure
You step up to bat.
This is the Bigs,
Hardball the game.
Bets are on,
The action,
fast,
And the odds,
Never even.
There's your enemy,
The pitcher on high,
Home on his mound
With his supporting team.
You, wood in hand,
stand alone.
No hope of relief.
He watches the signs,
Takes you in.
Motions,
Then Stretches,
And languidly steps in.
The wind up, like Tai-Chi movement,
Native dance in crescendo,
A leopard in motion,
stills the air, mesmerizes.
The crowd leans with you.
Come on now boy,
Be ready. Stand firm.
We're counting on you.
Beware the curve ball.
Now don't get caught watching,
He'll slide one by?
Yes, be ready, stand tall,
For many a mighty Casey with ego in hand
Has stood where you are now,
Daring to play ball,
And with equal dismay
Has paid the price,
Learned to rue the day
Fell prey to the heist.
Monday, October 23, 1995
Kokovin
Kokovin
I sing the song of my Kokovin,
with kisses of mollasses and wine.
She wants to steal my lips,
my tongue. They're mine,
c'est à moi she says,
et pour l'instant she's right.
Perhaps I'll tell her later
she has only a temporary pass,
un droit passager to my mouth.
I need it to enjoy her syrup matted skin.
Her lips are poetry to my ears,
a french Koko-rico
in the morning of my doze.
There's a licorice innocence
to her candy games.
She takes me playfully,
tickling down ears and neck
Kouji-Kouji-cou
A spidery host slipping down its thread
to couch and blanket its new guest.
Her sugar coated chants
trap me in cotton candy webs,
chocolate feelers finger my future
and I awake too late
to regret her music
touched in Paris,
where love is not always confectionary in nature.
Thursday, August 17, 1995
Postmodern Poetry
Postmodern Poetry
I like to always have
a pack of gum on me;
I buy it in bulk.
You get the idea:
you offer a piece of gum,
its simple generosity.
I also like poetry.
It's like hanging out,
Playing with two dimensional Legos,
School without the teachers
Playing in the recesses of your mind.
Clipping nails isn't very poetic
But society dictates that we trim,
And clip,
And pluck away the uneeded.
Writers needn't worry, they say.
They're a sanitary bunch.
Certainly more than philosophers,
Who dirty their ideas in writing.
Post-modern writing doesn't need nails.
There's nothing to hold on to.
Perhaps we've got to get a grip.
Take a bottle of whisky for instance.
They make nice traveling companions
Always ready for a mixer.
Addiction is a trip
With all your cultural baggage lost at the airport.
Students and hippies travel light though,
Because they know how to find culture
And whisky
At a convenience store.
Is American culture an oxymoron
or a matter of convenience?
Linguistic entropy tends to disprove
Figurative imagery, poetic communication
Pliably and expressively alive.
I’m taking a few lexical liberties here.
The French find this nauseating.
It always ends the same
Repetition creates truism
Repetition creates truism.
La boucle est bouclée.
(The French love this.
Then again they invented post-modernism.)
After they teach you to play deconstruct
Is it any wonder we want to fuck nature
When we describe it as virgin?
This isn't pastiche or histoire
Simply vulgar and simulacre self-plagiarism.
If today's poem were to fall,
fall in a raped wood,
Would anyone give a shit?
Saturday, August 12, 1995
Ma Marion
Ma Marion
Enfin ma Marion.
Est-ce une hésitation
de langue, un balbutiement momentané?
Ou bien une initiative,
une tentative de te posséder tendrement ?
Ma Marion, qui n'embrasse pas
à la française. Doux résultat
de la Mar en elle.
Tranquil comme la Méditerranée
sous l'agréable Spanish soleil.
Ma Marion et ses eaux bleues profondes
agitent ma barque plus qu'aucun soufflé ou tempête ne le pourraient.
Je me laisse emporter.
Je m'y noie à volonté.
Ma Marion où ce jeu de mots peut-il aller ?
-J'ai peur que ce ne soit plus
moi qui mène le jeu.-
Ma Marion belle badineuse
me grille without batting an eye
et non sans un plaisir sadiste.
Ma propre marquise est-elle?
Toi qui d'habitude est si infranchissable
au rire, n'est-ce pas, ma Marion ?
Marion, will we still be laughing
long after we marry ?
N'est-elle pas reflexive cette question ?
Ma Marion, avouée maline
et cependant très innocente,
elle n'est en aucune mesure dépendante,
même sous l'ombre de Lolita
qu'elle m'a donné significativement
et pour vous confondre...
Je ne sais plus à qui je m'adresse
Je me perds de nouveau
chaque fois avec le même plaisir
en essayant de garder sur la langue
à la fois le son et le goût
de ma Marion
dans ton nom résonant,
assonant légèrement,
et tout comprenant
pour moi, ma,
oui, Ma, Marion.
Friday, May 12, 1995
Reading the waters of my life
Reading the waters of my own life, it would be very easy to get lost in the interweaving path of the river and its multitude of tributaries. Seen from afar, one might be tempted to get lost in the tragedies that befall the river. I have therefore decided to recount to you the events of just one small bend in the course of my river. And hoping that you have chosen to read these stories at a time of day when life allows itself to be taken as a joke, I’ve decided to write about a time when even the tragedies were life affirming.
Wednesday, March 15, 1995
I Have Dreamed of You So Much
I Have Dreamed of You So Much
(translation of the poem J'ai Tant Rêvé De Toi, by Robert Desnos)
I have dreamed of you so much that you are losing your reality.
Is there yet time enough to reach this living body and kiss this mouth this birth of voice so dear to me?
I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, accustomed to being crossed on my chest clutching at your shadow will no longer fold to the contours of your body, perhaps.
And that, before the real appearance of that which has been haunting and governing me these many days and years, I might become a shadow.
O scales of emotion.
I have dreamed of you so much that it is no doubt too late for me to wake-up. I am standing asleep, my body exposed to all the appearances of life and love and you, the only one who counts for me today. I would less be able to touch your face and your lips, than the lips and face of the first passer-by.
I have dreamed of you so much, walked, talked, slept with your phantom so much that perhaps and nevertheless the only thing left for me is to become a phantom amongst the phantoms, a hundred times more shadowy than the shadow which gaily strolls and will stroll over the sundial of your life.
J'ai tant rêvé de toi
J'ai tant rêvé de toi
by Robert Desnos
J'ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.
Est-il encore temps d'atteindre ce corps vivant et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance de la voix que m'est chère?
J'ai tant rêvé de toi que mes bras habitués en étreignant ton ombre à se croiser sur ma poitrine ne se plieraient pas au contour de ton corps, peut-être.
Et que, devant l'apparence réelle de ce qui me hante et me gouverne depuis des jours et des années, je deviendrais une ombre sans doute.
O balances sentimentales.
J'ai tant rêvé de toi qu'il n'est plus temps sans doute que je m'éveille. Je dors debout, le corps exposé à toutes les apparences de la vie et de l'amour et toi, la seule qui compte aujourd'hui pour moi, je pourrais moins toucher ton front et tes lèvres que les premières lèvres et le premier front venu.
J'ai tant rêvé de toi, tant marché, parlé, couché avec ton fantôme qu'il ne me reste plus peut-être, et pourtant, qu'à être fantôme parmi les fantômes et plus ombre cent fois que l'ombre qui se promène et se promènera allégrement sur le cadran solaire de ta vie.
Monday, January 23, 1995
Tracy
I, on the other hand, had Tracy Perry. In second grade we were "best friends". He was not in the recess sports or girl chasing crowd and he puked every once in a while, but boy did he have an imagination. Both him and his brother were incredible artists. They both sketched and drew all the time, and if you went over to their house to play espionage or old-west you would see how they had drawn cartoons all over the walls of their room.
Now I was no artist, but Tracy and I both loved to play make-up. We would sit for hours and write long stories with fat pencils on big grey paper with big lines so far apart that there was a third dotted line in the middle; and after we wrote our crazy stories about three-eyed, five-legged monsters who spent their afternoons rolling around chasing people in a continuous sort of cart-wheel, we would read them aloud and act them out. Kids would gather around a little corner of grass near the play-house to watch our little productions. Tracy and I were living in a world of complete imagination.
For almost three years Tracy and I were best friends. One of my best memories was when Tracy and another kid were playing on the blocks, and I asked if I could play too. The other kid said no, that they were playing and I couldn’t join them, and why didn't I just leave? I was crushed, but Tracy stood right up, looked the kid right in the face and said, "That’s not very nice, maybe you’re the one who should leave." Then he smiled at me, re-building my self-confidence in an instant and saving me thousands of dollars in therapy bills at some later time in my life. And off we ran to go play on the swings.
One day things changed though. I realize now that it was I who changed. Slowly I began playing soccer and girl-chase at recess instead of make-believe. It is not that I was trying to be cool or anything, I just liked playing soccer now and then and there was something, that I didn’t fully understand at the time (as if I fully do now) about girls in knee-high socks and pig-tails that made me want to chase them. how Tracy's face would drop when I would tell him I wasn’t going to play make-believe at recess. By seventh grade, the separation was complete. And though we were only divided by one or two lunch tables, in junior high school that equated to being worlds apart.
Wednesday, November 23, 1994
Monochromatic Rainbow
Azure bays
Vermilion skies
Verdant grasses
Oh vivid Earth,
Oh dull me!
Monday, July 11, 1994
Ode to the "O"
Ode to the "O"
O the loneliness of the lone O.
Solitary and firm
like the last outpost guard,
waiting for more letters or words
to swarm across the page.
O, the profound depths
of your semantic singularity,
producing short shocked sighs
and expiating exhalations.
Or perhaps strings of your brethren
join to commiserate angst ridden existences.
O egglike symbol of our life.
Matriarch who engenders a family
of little swirly roundlings
Following your red letter lead.
O, in your artfulness,
like the open eye of the muses'
inspirational wink:
Shakespeare's dramatic
wooden playground O,
Seurat's petite colorful
pastel building block o.
O ubiquitous nothingness.
Golden sealer of marriages
and faucets.
Your cornerless presence
a signature of poetry
turned endlessly in upon itself.
O, cornerstone of the poet's heart.
Circumscribing the silent space,
emphasizing the emptiness,
preparing the way for a multitude
of equally circular stanzas.
Friday, July 8, 1994
I Love You Baby
I Love You Baby
I love you baby, but I just can’t smile.
I’ve given away all my smiles,
Back in the days of wonder and impatience
When we used our bodies like greasy brillo pads,
Scouring the world.
Our moonbeams and stardust have turned
To silence and lint.
Our promises seem meaningless now
That I can’t remember our faces' smiles.
Until we have more than smudged words and fading memories,
I can only rejoice in the palm of my hand.
And wait.
Monday, June 6, 1994
Beat The Time
Beat The Time
Two warm half naked silhouettes sway softly
Circumscribed by a small circle of time
Confined by its shortness.
Background lines of music,
Unaware of the two now tightly clung bodies
Feverishly trying to melt into each other and the rhythm
To forget that tomorrow will part them neither friends nor lovers
Just a helpless memory and fervent hope of tomorrow —a year,
Twist and veil the hour.
Frantically, with neither shame nor regret,
They hold each other close through the warm wetness of their mouths
As their bodies, try to beat the time.
Tuesday, May 17, 1994
Aveenu Malkenu
Aveenu Malkenu
I
Aveenu Malkenu, my father my friend.
Unconditional is your love;
unsoundable your kindness.
For all you have done, peace be to you.
Aveenu Malkenu, my father my friend,
like a warrior of peace
yours is a tree of life,
and happy those who hold fast to it.
Proudly you stand in fertile soil.
Humble roots firmly planted,
trunk gently bending in the winds of change
and branches reaching,
you point the way towards the stars.
Your noble stance suggests an ideal
balance between earth and sky.
You connect grounds of reason and stability
to space of dreams and passion.
If ecologists could see into the core of being
and read there a story of life
recorded in rings of growth,
they would find fifty-six concentric chapters,
tracing most humble beginnings
to fruitful present.
II
Guide and vessel in unsure waters,
you are my navigating hand.
The parted waters
and the dry land.
You have set the example,
matching form and essence
word and deed.
O sculptor of flesh and blood,
O companion of the heart:
Had you brought me into the promised land
but not consecrated a temple of security, Dayenu.
Had you blanketed me in warmth
but not sent me through the gates of Wright, Dayenu.
Had you given me an education
but abandoned hope after Mother's passing, Dayenu.
Had you continued living
but not continued loving, Dayenu
Had you given of yourself
but not believed in the future, Dayenu.
Had you encouraged my dreams
but not supported me in failure, Dayenu.
Had you bedded my fears
but not pushed me to excel, Dayenu.
Had you wanted the best
but not cared how I obtained it, Dayenu.
For this legacy and all you have done, Dayenu.
III
Once more cradle my hand in yours,
and let us return to the chosen asylum,
that pebble laden pond of our youth.
There, our small saucers of rock
carefully chosen for flight
shall continue skipping, perhaps
never letting the water catch
and swallow them down.
Let us return again
to that bed-time fantasia,
that fabulous never-never-land of imagination
Let me run to you once more
and climb your trunk
and swing from your branches
and eat of your fruit
and dream in the shade of your gaze
like so many times before
just before slipping into the land of nod.
Aveenu Malkenu, more father more friend
let not my seed fall far
from your giving tree.
Do not let us go apart.
Let not the bridge we form,
a crossing of hands and souls
tumble to dust.
What if memory should not be enough
to guard your voice's smiles,
your eyes' laughter,
your brow's bloom
and the imprint of your warm embrace.
All of you that is dear to me,
Aveenu Malkenu, my father my friend.
IV
Neither builder nor blacksmith
I would like to make you a poem
that isn't one.
Words fall heavily from my hands
blunt unfaithful tools
betraying meaning.
Nor constructor I
stacking beauty
stone by stone,
word by word
in aspiring form.
I fear slipping into Babel,
and losing you in a labyrinth of lines
from which these Daedalus thoughts might not escape.
I am an architect without plan
building structures of word,
without rhyme or reason.
V
Dare I, Dear I
Continue to offer
these words of a feather,
flocking across pages of blue
too hollow to ring true.
Carrier pigeons,
bearing messages from the heart
in a pitter-patter vocabulary.
A coded language,
filling in the flat lines
with a syncopated pulse for you;
it's message barely audible,
and rarely understood.
Lay aside your science,
it won't help you decipher
this cardiogram I send.
Instead, close your eyes,
press your ear to the page
and listen
to the two beat measures take flight.
Let them course directly to your veins;
from my heart to yours
a glad gift, a transfusion of love
for all you have done
Aveenu Malkenu, my father my friend,
peace be to you.
Thursday, May 12, 1994
CWA Paean
As I look around and back through the past, I realize that at one time or another during those fourteen years I explored every corner, every nook and cranny of this campus. Though now empty and quiet, in my mind it is filled with the faces, voices and smells of the past. The playground still rings with savage shouts of triumph from a time when a slide was a dark mountain to be scaled, and a sandbox could contain an army of orcs. The fields, with their heady smell of fresh-cut grass, or slick with rain, seem filled with countless soccer balls from recess pick-up games, to summer soccer with Gil, to a state championship hanging in the balance of a shoot-out.
Walking past ‘the bubble’ gym, now the dome, my stomach unconsciously tightens as I remember the long process of weighing-in and waiting to step on the matt for a week-end wrestling tournament or weeknight meet. A light breeze over the gravel parking lot, gives me the same puff of freedom and invincibility that came with having a car, but also the bitter-sweet chill of taking refuge from middle school dances overcast by the salty tears of unfulfilled desire and heartbreak.
With each familiar step I tread, the nostalgic reverie drowns me deeper and deeper. Walking amidst these shadowy memories, I feel somehow lost, caught between student and alumni and comfortable with neither one.
I have seen the sun rise on the Charles Wright campus, and I have seen it set. I have passed weekdays and weekends here. I have stood at the top of its ranks and received its highest honors, and I have knelt and dug in its soil. Over fourteen years I have seen brothers, teachers, headmasters, friends and classes fill and empty the halls of Charles Wright Academy, and now I realize that I have come and gone as well. And as I scratch at my name engraved upon its steps, the steps our class helped to rebuild, I can only hope that one day I may return to Charles Wright all that it has given me.
Monday, April 4, 1994
An Early Marriage
Even though the whole affair didn't last more than two weeks, I remember the wedding quite clearly. I remember how after the wedding I kissed the bride then ran away to play soccer, like going off to war. Soon after, the bell rang and we all went in for Math -so much for a honeymoon.
The day after the wedding, I gave Ashley the gold plated necklace with a lapis lazuli pendant that I had proudly bought for ten dollars in the J.C. Penney's jewelry department. For this gift she gave me a kiss on the cheek behind the blocks. Maybe if I had bought the fourteen karat gold necklace I would have gotten a kiss on the lips, but who knows?
It is with a pang of regret that I recall those first few days following the marriage. Each day we sat next to each other at our little desk. Sitting there in conjugal joy consecrating Mrs. Munn's spelling class. And each day Ashley drew a pie graph with a section for both me and my best friend Brian Stern. Ashley would explain how the size of each piece represented how much she liked us. Each day I watched as my piece of pie grew smaller and smaller, and Brian's grew larger. Finally, according to the chart, Ashley liked Brian more than me; after that day Ashley and I no longer sat at the same desk during spelling class.
What still bothers me is this: we were never formally divorced. Our marriage was quite official of course, complete with bible ceremony, witnesses, and preacher. Trevor wasn’t a real preacher I guess, but he was the most religious guy we knew. Well, he brought a bible to school sometimes and could name some of the books in it. As I remember his sermon was short and to the point. He said, “Girls have cooties,” advice which in retrospect may not be so bad. I guess the fact that Ashley kissed my best friend behind the blocks just two weeks after our marriage would be considered the same as a divorce.
If I remember correctly she went on to break Brian’s heart too, and didn’t stop until she had dated all the non-drooling guys in our class. But I was the first, and that means something, right? In fifth grade, several of us made a pact not to date Ashley anymore. We all agreed that she had to be stopped. A week later, Aaron Gonter had broken down and secretly started dating her, though I don't think he lasted more than a few days before getting dumped. I suppose a nine-year-old’s resolve is as fragile as his heart.
I guess I found some closure to this chapter of my childhood when many years later Ashley came back to Charles Wright after having left to go to public school in the 6th grade. It was senior year, I was feeling very confident about life and Ashley had grown into a very kind and sweet young woman--nothing like the serial heart-breaker I had once known. Anyway, it’s not like I wanted to marry her or anything, I had already done that in third grade. I just wanted to take her out on a date... As it turned out, not much came of the date. It was cordial, but it was clear that we had, what’s the expression? Grown apart. The spell had been broken, and next year we would both go off to different colleges and follow our own paths. I no longer worry that we have never officially gotten divorced. Hey, Washington’s a no fault state, so nobody’s to blame, right?
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