She sees the world
with Capricorn lenses
and sketches bread
and butterflies when
she is supposed to be
studying arithmetic.
He laughs at symmetrical
lines while telling his tigger
a story about the little
girl who went to Wonderland.
She wanders through
the pansies and remembers
when she sang along. She
remembers the white
pansy and how it called her
ugly, how it degraded her
to the point of tears. The pansies
have morphed into people and
poke her with their stems and
flap their petals, giggling
at her sorrow. He takes her
hand during recess one day.
They talk with the pansies,
confronting the naughty flowers.
He tells them she has the prettiest
eyes he's ever seen and she
flushes and pretends
she didn't hear him.
She imagines finding her haven
again, locating the place where
her imagination isn't a curse.
Where she is normal to those
who adore her. He imagines the
woods from his childhood where
he has been banished from. He
misses his home and the sound of
his teddy bear laughing at his jokes.
Their parents are in agreement: they
are a terrible influence to each other.
They talk about little white rabbits
and skittish piglets and they
pretend they're still children even
though she has grown into skinny jeans
and he has taken a fancy to converse.
Their parents are in agreement: this
is only puppy love. This will not last.
She was the first to tell him
it was okay to want the impossible.
He was the first to tell her she
was talented enough to be a writer.
And when he kissed her, when he
held her tight and told her it was
going to work out, she believed him.
She believed in them and eternity
and love, something she had never
seen before. He was her impossible
dream, just as she was his.
Their parents were stunned.
This wasn't puppy love. This wasn't
an infatuation. This wasn't lust.
It was love.