“There are things you can not write yourself out of. Take love...”
-- Mindy Nettifee, “The Advice I Never Got”
(A very overdue apology)
(For Pamela Martin)
This is where it really starts, isn’t it?
Not with the endless litany of women who’ve rejected me,
but with the one I rejected.
The junior high dance-floor dim,
and you coming up to me,
three years after we were “boyfriend and girlfriend”
whatever that means in fourth grade.
But I had my eye on the blonde cutie
you had not grown into,
a cutie who wouldn’t even give me one dance,
but still pulled my attention away from you.
I did not give you one dance either.
Perhaps, at that moment, my life turned,
and I learned a new dance step --
pushed two steps away,
rather than pulled one step in --
which I would repeat for 35 years.
Yes, that night I learned the dance
of rejection
rather than acceptance.
Even learned to enjoy it.
And would forever search for
the perfect partner
to that particular step with.
So now, I not only apologize
for the heartbreak I know I caused
on that dim dance-floor,
but I say that, in that moment, I probably
hurt myself more than you.