October 13th, 1988

 

The girl with the curly blonde hair The girl who I think about late at night wearing her leotard and her Take Five dance studio costume. The girl who can do the no-handed aerial-cartwheel where she tucks her arms in to her shoulders like dual pyramids as she becomes suspended in the pond of the atmosphere above before landing perfectly. The girl I grew up with who my mom used to babysit who walked barefoot in my back yard capturing fireflies in transparent mason jars. The girl who is the cheerleading captain. The girl who, a filched decade later in my life, will serve as the inspiration for the daffy female protagonist of my thousand page tome of postmodernism. The girl who sat next to me on the Bleachers when she giggled and asked if she could call my house during her sleepover. The first girl I ever gave the digits of my phone number to when she asked if she could call my house during her fifth grade birthday sleepover and play an innocuous game called, “call a boy up and tell him a joke.”

 The girl who wears her cheerleading uniform to school on game days and does a series of backflips across the freshly linoleum mint of the gymnasium floor.

 The girl who tells you before Misses Reinhardt’s fifth grade year that she loves this song. That she goes home and dances to this song. That she just can’t get enough of this song. That at night, when she is all alone in her room, she gets up and turns on this song and jounces on her mattress thinking of the boy who sits next to her in class  

The girl who went to the purported rival high school in town where she was the cheerleading captain. The girl whose brother is your age and who was diagnosed with the same vile disease that stripped the breath of your father from his body only he was able somehow to beat it.

The girl whose kiss I tried to kiss by the deep sea blue of the stage curtain separating the gulping lip of stage from the remainder of the audience in spring only to find her somehow, looking back at me, her face the color of cheap wine cooler, hitting the ashen dome of her cheek bone, smiling...

If it isn't autumn and you are in fifth grade.

If It isn't...