just a boy.

We talked almost every night, Joe and I.
We met through a mutual contact. A girl that hated me, adored him. We happened to meet. Said girl hated me more. I tend to have that problem. Girls hate me. I try to be friendly. Sometimes I feel like there was a code of conduct, an indoctrination, and I didn't receive a copy of this code, nor was I invited to the after parties. I never did wear the right shoes or curl my hair the right way. Maybe that's why I never fit in.

Joe was the intellectual equal I'd always wanted. He was sublimely intelligent, with a vast knowledge of the literary cannon, and a subtle, sarcastic sense of humor. He brought out the literatura in me. Every night we'd talk until the sun came up; about his life, about mine. But the two never coincided. There was never even a hint at a possible intertwining of our worlds. Perhaps this was why I was so very fond of him and his way.

He would set the phone down, on speaker, and play for me the most beautiful songs that he'd written; most often times, on the spot, calling me his muse. I could hear his cat purring as he played his songs. A few times I wrote lyrics for him and he put them to music in a way I could never quite grasp.

We had an intense power struggle. I never would allow a man the upper hand, and he seemed happy to oblige to submitting. In many ways his allusion to worshipping me were overlooked by myself; a fact not lost on me now.

I saw him as a man; sturdy, knowing his place in the world. He concealed his cracks so effortlessly that it took some time for me to dig up the roots of his strength. I finally began to see the sunken parts of his structure; the insecurities that he worked so hard to mask. I talked to him, believing it was possible to keep him at bay. Believing the intertwining of our worlds was as much of an impossibility for him as it was for me. His soul was beautiful and he stamped his mark into my poetic memory, but there was no place in the inner chambers of my heart.
I saw him as a man, but as time passed and his walls began to crumble, I saw him for the boy that he still was. And then it was too late; he'd fallen in love, and I hadn't been paying attention. I had assumed that the man I thought he was wouldn't be so ignorant as to fall in love with me.

"Never love a wild thing"

But he did. I broke our ties instantaneously.
Sometimes it's the only way.


He wrote one song for me before that flame in his heart died.

Sometimes when the night is very still and I know everybody has gone to bed, I'll play it. Just to remember; to feel the guilt of his unrequited love, as I feel I deserve to.