There lay she and she

Under the white jasmine tree

Sharing a cup of bubble tea,

A polka dot blouse

blue skies and white clouds,

tears, playful banter, and vows

All the trinkets and baubles we wear upon our youths.

There stood the boy

In the same class yet a different world

Ushered out of childhood by the impatient years,

Tall, graceful, with a pair of chiseled hands

that fashioned soul and song from color and canvas.

With her little heart folded into a paper boat

She sets sail for adulthood while the blinking stars look on

With oars in hand and dreams on deck

She sings the lyrics to her heart’s ballad out loud

Dreaming that somewhere beyond the misty shroud

The boy would be waiting on the shore, smiling proud.

But wherever his inky dark eyes were fixed

She was never far.

They spoke heart-to-heart, saw eye-to-eye

Barrierless, genderless as two ferns in a forest

Yet the heart of his eyes never shined

Into the eye of her heart.

He was but another side of a hollow polygon

She knew that nobody but she could color in.

Still she sings her feeble song

And the broken melody limps along 

Until her voice grows thin, keels over and dies.

Now not even the cicadas cry

Of those sweltering summers

When she and she still lay

Under the white jasmine tree.