An Ode to The New Girl in Ms. Ramsey’s Class

You came into Ms. Ramsey’s math class

A chestnut face full of braces

and vibrant colored beads in neat braids

you probably sat between your mother’s legs the night before

anxious about your first day of school

Since your first day was everyone else’s 68th

I did not understand why I stuttered when I spoke to you

Or why my stomach turned when you caught me staring

A crush is what they call it

A fitting name, for I was floored whenever you walked by,

leaving a faint trace of Cocoa Butter and Blue Magic hair grease

It was a math class but somehow we developed chemistry

I know that line was corny

But youth and love is the corniest thing of them all

It’s throwing rocks at your window at midnight

It’s standing on your front lawn with a boombox

playing ‘In Your Eyes’ by Peter Gabriel

It’s “But Daddy, I love him!”

as Prince Neptune shakes his head at Ariel’s naiveté

It’s sharing a plate of spaghetti

and I give you the last meatball

It’s moving outside of the boundaries of time

Riding through space on a magic carpet as I show you the world

for just 90 minutes in Ms. Ramsey’s class

But love, like youth

is fleeting

One day, I don’t stutter anymore

My stomach no longer ties itself in a million knots

We grew together and then grew apart

The chestnut face full of braces

does not giggle at my jokes

But her smile is somehow more radiant

Her pearly whites

contain every Lunchable snack I said you can have

and every walk home from school

and every night using the landline

despite the wrath of our parents

for ‘running up the phone bill’

Memories of our youth

Now embedded in our DNAs

The taste of first love is like

eating your favorite food for the first time

But who eats hamburgers forever?

One day you discover pizza, and then ice cream, and then

Well you get the point

Now when I smell Blue Magic hair grease

I smile and I think

of my you, my first crush