There she was,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
pulling cash out of an ATM,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
wearing jeans, yellow halter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn’t my ATM but I pulled over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had never seen her alone before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We barely knew each other,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a few hellos, dubious eyeball flirtations<\/p>\n\n\n\n
in the halls of Oregon City High school two years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A champion swimmer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
who wore this one invisible white dress,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
no underwear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew all her routes around campus,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
intercepting with clandestine inspections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fear and apprehension gripped me like a vise,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Exponentially unnerved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She vaguely knew who I was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was no mere crush<\/p>\n\n\n\n
like the Columbia is no mere river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d written hundreds of words of lust and longing<\/p>\n\n\n\n
about her in my journal the first semester of my senior year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d never written like that about a girl before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I called them Sightings<\/em> as if I was on safari and she was the big fox prowling the savannah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few lines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I guess there is a God.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those eyes. What is it about them? I wish I knew.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There is an aura about her. It’s the presence of complete sexuality.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I would love to meet her without the high school surroundings. Will I ever get the chance?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve been making discreet inquiries about her. The reports have not been promising.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We crossed paths with each other in the hall. I was walking ahead of her acutely aware of her presence,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n hoping she would come up to me. She did!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We conversed at the ATM for ten minutes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n ended up in her apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She drank a pint of rum and cokes in 15 minutes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n popped a pain pill stolen from her doctor father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Loverboy played. Then Night Ranger. Journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She slipped off the halter and jeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She took off my clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We ended up having sex in the bathtub (her idea)<\/p>\n\n\n\n and she started speaking in tongues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I got her out of the tub,<\/p>\n\n\n\n put her to bed before dark,<\/p>\n\n\n\n left a nice note with my phone number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She never called.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My first feral woman,<\/p>\n\n\n\n noir to the bone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They make great literature (they’ll never read)<\/p>\n\n\n\n but usually burn you in the end<\/p>\n\n\n\n or so I’ve found out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We met 30 years later at a dive bar in Portland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She walked in wielding a cane, body wracked by MS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She had approval from her semi-husband to fuck me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We could use her best friend’s house in Oregon City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I told her about the journals, she loved that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I told her about the white dress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She asked why I never said anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I told her one does not approach a Greek goddess between classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She really loved that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She didn’t recall the note but did recall the afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She apologized for getting so wasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her eyes still the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That squint that could block a total eclipse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We had a gin and tonic each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I walked her to a cab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cab drove her to the friend’s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She died a decade later at 56.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The online obituary never revealed the cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She left behind the husband, children, grandchildren.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The obituary photo unrecognizable,<\/p>\n\n\n\n even the eyes gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She must have chosen that photo<\/p>\n\n\n\n and I’m glad she did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perseverance one the best of human qualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vastly underrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Never on display, few ever notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a single comment left on the memories section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This poem will have to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think she would have loved it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There she was, pulling cash out of an ATM, wearing jeans, yellow halter. It wasn’t my ATM but I pulled over. I had never seen her alone before. We barely knew each other, a few hellos, dubious eyeball flirtations in the halls of Oregon City High school two years ago. A champion swimmer who wore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,942,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-city","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10083"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10086,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10083\/revisions\/10086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}