The Boy I’ll Never Forget

Sometimes there’s just that one-in-a-million person.

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

I was the starstruck age of fifteen, and you were already thinking yourself a champion in the making.

There was no room in your life for me. But I edged in anyway, trying to find a foothold in your psyche.

You were the apple of your father’s eye, though you never realized how much he cared about you as he pushed and pushed and pushed you to every limit.

Sometimes you were so exhausted from it all that I wouldn’t hear from you for days.

I tried to tell myself I was putting all the words in a row just to figure out what you meant to me and what I could mean to you.

You weren’t the bookish type, but you still read through my one-off stories with an interest that intrigued — and enchanted — me.

You told me I could go places, and I was charmed by the promise of it all.

It was just a summer thing, May flowers to July powers, but you made an imprint on your own. The scars — I still wear them proudly on my heart-laden sleeve. No one asks about you because they never knew about you. But that’s okay. You were my summertime secret.

I didn’t want to share you with the rest of the world anyway.