There's No Rhyme, But There's a Reason.

Let’s go back to that love poem written for me by a boy whose love I didn’t return.

It was 1990 and I was living with two guys—and having a covert, on-again off-again affair with one of them. I wanted it to be on all the time, and he, alternately, was always on the prowl for someone else. Unfortunately, I didn’t know then what I know now, and so I persisted with this relationship that actually was going somewhere, but that somewhere was a very, very bad place.

We had a party one weekend and roommate #2 started to take interest in another woman who was there. It was clearly heating up, and I was beside myself with distress and misery over this turn. At the point that I became inconsolable, my admirer entered the scene. He swooped me away to my bedroom, where, rather than any outcome he could have anticipated, I cried, and cried, and cried some more. I remember he was not just skinny, but painfully scrawny, and I could feel his spindly legs through his jeans as I sobbed with my head in his lap. I wasn't at my most prudent in this position with this level of vulnerability, but he didn't seem to hint at a trespass.

He chose the moment that my jagged breath started to smooth and my tears began to evaporate to tell me what he had been doing all evening—there in the corner, with a crumpled piece of notepaper cupped secretively in his hand. It was this:

"What to say.

All in the midst of people,
shine like the sunlight;
One as so bright
as the six stars of the Northern
Cross.

Two as so many before us
strive for the future, yet is unknown.
I guess into the abyss for an answer.
One hour glass to another.

Only time shall tell.

If is the life that could be the end to a friend;
yet life is the finding to an unknown.

Smile, smirk, and be cheerful my
friend.

The times shall change as Dylan.
And the foremost shall disappear.

A single chance at love.
And, once again, we pass in the night." 

I didn’t and couldn’t find a hint of attraction toward this boy. Even as much as I wanted to in that moment. But I saved the poem for may reasons. For one, it was beautiful to me; beautiful and for me. But it also was a reminder that everywhere there is love unreciprocated. For me. For him. And the reasons are myriad. But what remains constant is that this truth is unchangeable, unaffected by persuasion, and, also, sometimes unexplainable.

I also saved it so that I wouldn’t forget, in those times that I might doubt, that there was at least one person out there who thought I was amazing.