Slammed & Split

Trust & Go

Download Trust & Go as an mp3

When I was 17,
I gave a girl a story.

'Cuz when I was 16,
I wrote it about her.

It was
about a boy
and a girl.

It was
about a boy
who was too unsure to make a move
and too smart to make the mistake he made.

It was
about a girl
who overreacted,
though not entirely unfairly;
this was during high school, after all,
and high school was nothing,
if not overdramatic.

Accordingly,
it was about the one who got away.

It was
our story,
she and I.
A tale told right,
at least the way my mind
seemed to serve.

To brief you,
without making the scale too small —
this story is still out there,
after all —
junior year we got involved;
flirting as interaction
because sometimes
some thing evolved.
Sparks were always flying
but we allowed them to dissolve,
pulling out repeatedly
instead of putting protection on.

Since that made mistakes more likely,
come time for junior prom,
we ambled through some bramble,
separate own issues going on.
And then I slipped
and did a thing
that caused her heart much harm:

I hooked up with someone else —
which was probably within the rules.
But "don't ask, don't tell"
was part of that,
and I had a frisbee bruise.

That was when the ice storm hit
and our power lines went down.
Communication cut off,
space between just frozen ground.
When interactions had to happen,
piercing icicles often found
their marks
in wounded hearts
scar tissue thick around.

A year went by
before we bonded over cake
at some celebratory school function
and seemed resolved to make
amends and be friends
with not a single mention made
of the twisted two-person tango
that we had both just played.

Graduation approached
with the subject unbroached,
and I thought she should know
that I was sorry then —
and I'm still sorry now —
for the way things went down
and I trusted
that she remembered the sound
of the harmonic heart pound
we once conducted allegro
and sent carrying loud.

So at 17,
I gave a girl a story
that she was involved in
and found myself scrawled in
the back of her mind
from time to time;
contact never falling
too far behind
the speed of our lives
as we divined
the paths to be traveled
and their winding lines.

But no more apologies
for what happened back then,
and how we've settled into
being casual friends.

Because at 17,
I gave a girl our story.
And that's where the story ends.