i once knew a boy

we met 18 years ago he and i. we were friends so they tell us but he nor i have any recollection of meeting or conversing. we just met and quietly we walked through the halls holding in our opinions of each other and of the world. he was shy of his emotions, wicked smart of his brain and clean of all innocence. i was loud in my mouth, dreamy in my head and filthy in my heart. we had nothing in common or so i remember thinking or maybe we had more in common than we led on...we don't know and never will. high school ended and like good aquittances we parted ways. he chose to study the words of the books and i chose to study human nature by living life without student fees. years went by and not a word or contact from him or from me. i would wonder about him like a last minute thought that would flow in and out on a chaotic day. scramble scramble were my thoughts of, "what is he wearing today", "what color is his mood this evening?" "are we naked at the same time?" nothing substantial and nothing lost. i looked for him in the lost and found box on the internet once in awhile but never was he there. he wasn't lost in this world he was living his life, he was dating a girl, he was writing essays for graduate school, he was cursing at the tv screen when it wouldn't show his favorite pbs program, he was laughing at her jokes and sucking on her lips. he was there and i was here...i was walking through relationship after relationship looking for the answer i would eventually find in my soul. i was drowning my sorrow in the bottle of a beer somewhere in the middle of man's land. i was talking to babies that my sisters bore. i was laughing at my own jokes. i was cursing at god for the disease in my head. i was loving the fact that i had an entire life ahead of me to fuck up and redeem. we never made it that point to search the other one out. it wasn't in the cards for him or for me. and then one day as i was searching that lost and found box yet again on the internet, i found him. he was lost and needed to be claimed. i sat with my stomach in my throat...the smell of that high school hallway came flooding back to me and i returned to that girl from the other side of the tracks to his wholesome image. i couldn't let this pass me up. i didn't have the girlie guts then to say something to him but by god, i had the womanly balls to do it now. and i did. i wrote him a note asking if he remembered me and then i sat and waited for his delayed response. he managed to seperate the fact from fiction long enough to reply with one word "yes". i was in crush on a boy heaven. we filled our emails with words of lost time, with memories of what molded us into the woman and man we are today, with emotions of reuniting, with stories of that time long ago when football games were our friday night plans and completed science homework was our only obligation in life. we were polite and said things to each other like, "i want to share with you how i truly am but i'm afraid i'm going to offend you so...my apologies." we crossed our t's and dotted our i's with sensitvity. we made jokes at the expense of words. we urged each other to not hold back, bring it on we yelled. we talked and talked and once he quoted a poem that reminded him of me, beautiful as it was i will never know how he got me out of all that. i was happy, i was elated, i was smiling at the thought of him, i married him in my head and worked out the wedding details in my dreams. i was full of expectations and hopes and those things you feel when you want to know more of that person you can't stop consuming. i had given up on knowing that a man like him existed nevermind that he was into me, the girl with filth in her heart. he made a believer out of me, he made a date with me in the near future. he...he...he...changed. one day hidden in the future his demure changed. he stopped talking of emotions, he stopped talking of future dates, he stopped quoting me poems from that generation, he stopped rushing home to email me with fresh ideas, he stopped calling me by my first name and last initial, he stopped sharing with me the mistakes he made that ended that 12 year relationship with the other woman, he stopped smelling my perfume of loneliness through cyberspace, he stopped noticing that i was still wearing my wedding dress in hope of a shotgun wedding, he stopped. and now i'm standing still and more so...alone. i don't know where to go from here and the comforting words from those who claim to love me are deafening. i'm like an abused victim, i want to hear it from him. i don't know how far off into the future that day will come...i only know this. i know that i was honest and with my honesty comes confrontation. i know that i am more so me than he will be him. i know that the day isn't over and most of what is said is made up. i know that for me he was worth looking for and with that energy. i know that i once knew a boy.