Reuniting With First Love At Reunion

Sheila dressed carefully, greeting first love in fits of anticipation, Amid glittering disco ball promoting twenty-fifth year class reunion, Drum master is at play, thumping Sheila’s traitorous heartstrings Heart seizes brain’s logic. Goodness! There he is now! Exposing her heartfelt imagined playoff, Lifetime daydream of being saved, is rapidly diminishing Hyena laugh from stage left startles. Room regains color Crepe paper reality slaps her when face offs begin. Who are these people? They look old. Did they graduate with her? Happily ever after daydreams dissipate rapidly. He has not looked this way. He is a classmate who can barely stand, apparently drinking heavily. Indisputable reality climbs onto Sheila’s back, grinning wickedly. Mean. Blatant truth hangs onto fat bellies, sneering over belt buckles. He is no longer her true love who got away, just a sad alcoholic of a man. Unrecognizable, flipping her daydream into a solid nightmare. Throwing themselves into each other’s arms tonight is laughable really. Sheila’s dream Prince Charming is not coming, for he has turned into a frog. And not a pretty one, quick to anger, not the sweet boy she had known. The love of her life pretended not to remember her. Surrounded by self-walls. She turned to her husband Jim and smiled. “Let’s dance,” She said. The lonely boy who had been pining for his lost love for years laughed. She is uppity now, he told himself. She is nothing like I remember. Daydreams up in smoke, with all of his other dreams and life goals. This would be his last reunion. He watched his dream princess dance.