Memoires of a Teenage Wallflower


I was a wallflower extraordinaire!
Romance had its place
in words scribbled across the pages
hidden in boxes under my bed,
never meant for a wallflower
in the real world.

~*~

I was the girl in the stands, never the cheerleader.
Everybody has their forte, mine was Math and English,  
theirs happened to be short skirts and pom-poms,
and dating the football team.

I attended every game with the rest of them.
At 16 didn’t every girl have a crush
on the captain of the football team?
Couldn’t take my eyes off him —
don’t know if he even knew I existed.
I wasn’t meant to be in the game.

Fifteen years later I saw him again —
Life has been good to him,
good wife, good business, good kids. 
But I could hardly look him in the eye
for fear he remembered me as a bumbling fool of a girl
with bad hair and home-made clothes
and an overwhelming inability to speak
outside study hall

~*~

I was an also-ran in the Fall Fair Queen pageant;
he was trying to run with the bad boys.
We had known each other forever
and always did fit easy together
in this thing call friends

There was something unspoken there
but the in-crowd casts a heavy shadow.
At 17 doesn’t every guy want to look hip?
But without a license a hip guy can’t be seen
letting his girl drive him on a date 
and still be one of the bad boys.
By the time none of that mattered anymore
it was already too late.

Fifteen years later I saw him again —
Things were good for him for a while
until his luck turned and his wife left him.
His daughter and my son became friends
and he clung to those opportunities
when their activities would let our paths cross.
I think he regrets letting me get away 
but I don’t regret the way things went 
though I still know — we always did fit easy together
in this thing call friends

~*~

I was the girl in study hall surrounded by boys.
It’s not what you think, they weren’t boyfriends,
but I had a lot of friends that were boys,
never did have much in common with girls.
He was a study hall genius

Sometimes you just go with the flow
when there doesn’t seem to be any reason not to.
Besides, at 18, doesn’t every girl feel
that by the time she leaves high school
she should have at least had one boyfriend?
But he stuck like glue, and I 
was an independent girl, suffocated,
hiding in the girls’ room just to get some air.
We meshed together as well as
oil and water.

Fifteen years later I saw him again —
things were good for him, he was even engaged,
until she realized what she was in for and left town.
He always did think he was ‘it’,
and always wanted me to know that he had it all,
that he was the one I shouldn’t have let get away.
but he was an accomplished, yet empty man
until the day he died.

~*~

Romance had its place
in words scribbled across the pages
hidden in boxes under my bed,
never meant for a wallflower
in the real world.

Twenty years later
I decided wallpaper was outdated
and started the slow process
of scraping the flower
off the wall



february 2011
Janet Reid

    



Awarded by Poetic Constellations 


    



Awarded by Poetic Constellations