We had four years of high school
to nurture the spark that both of us felt
but dared not fan into full blown flame.
I wouldn’t name it or claim it.
Our paths were too different,
(or so I thought)
and I was afraid to feel more deeply
than the smiles and the laughter—
the friendship we shared.

But that last day of school,
that senior class picnic,
when the spark joined our hands
and walked us round the lake
to a place of our own, a blanketed nest—
we whispered, we laughed, we kissed.
And we clung to each other,
like our girlfriend and boyfriend
weren’t waiting in the wings,
like we’d been at it for years,
with no strings attached.
There, on that sizzling afternoon in May,
away from routine
and in tune with our senses,
for a moment, an hour—
maybe a lifetime—
the power of friendship
and raging teen hormones,
(not to mention the scary unknown
of life beyond high school!)
kindled our passions
and set them aflame.

We have cherished a mutual, long-distance,
time-traveling love through the years
in a camouflaged cove in our hearts.
Not a lost love,
but a spark that still jumps,
still dances and flares up
when memory’s breeze
blows open the gate of the path not taken,
the alternate universe, unexplored—
the possibility of a different reality
that only imagination can know for sure.

Glenda Breeden for The Poplar Grove Muse
(March 25, 2016)