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The Prom Corsage

I hadn’t seen her in over twenty years,
but I knew her face on sight;
I should have asked her to the senior prom - 
instead, we both stayed home that night.

High school friends who never went on a date
because I was too afraid to ask her out;
In retrospect, the signs were there,
but I harbored a young man’s doubt.

Now, with two decades left behind us,
in a foreign land far away,
I stumbled upon my old high school crush
not knowing just what to say.

She was quite surprised to see me -
coincidences had put us there.
She was a successful corporate lawyer;
I was travelling without a care.

We shared pictures of our children;
Told snippets about our life;
Her husband was back in America;
I had just divorced my wife.

The bartender made his last call;
Nostalgic smiles were on our face;
We kissed and hugged goodbye again
as I quickly got out of that place.

I was glad to have gotten to see her,
though it made me feel inept again;
I wondered if we would have made good lovers
or if it were best kept just as friends.

She was in my thoughts as I wandered
around Europe with my back pack;
I promised that I would look her up again
in three months when I got back.

I read about her on the Internet
and cried when I saw the story;
She had died in an auto accident - 
leaving behind her girl and boy.

It happened one week after
our chance meeting in that bar;
They said an old high school year book
was found with her in the car.

Her letter was in the pile of mail
waiting for me when I got home;
She wrote she was glad to see me - 
on that trip she felt so alone.

She admitted to having a crush on me
back in our high school days;
She kept waiting for me to ask her out
until we went our separate ways.

She thanked me for keeping it casual
in the bar that fateful night;
She probably would have gone back to my room
and she knew that wouldn’t be right.

She asked me to remember her
but not to try to get in touch;
She’d rather me stay a memory
than get to know me a little too much.

I visited her in the graveyard
one day in the early spring,
and left a prom corsage there
as my final offering.



A Fictional Tale

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