He came from up north

I finally wrote a poem about this.


He came from up north
He was the last thing I expected
He was utterly different
From anyone who had ever noticed me before
And he fell deep in love with my image
Like a man staring at a sprawling painting
He climbed a lengthy ladder, knit with dreams of
Who he thought I might be

He gave me a nickname,
"Kat,"
He called me
No one around my hometown
Called me that
But how could he know
From up north?
And we spoke every night
He told me so many things about who he was
He said,
"You look nice with glasses."
He sent me two letters
One with a drawing, written on paper from his favorite notebook
And, because of that, he said,
"You should feel special."
I laughed at his witty words
I smiled shyly at his many
Compliments
I believed solemnly that
We were growing a friendship-
Something deep,
Something that would last.

And then, one day

He was gone.

I never understood why,
Although he offered many excuses
But at seventeen I blamed it on my own imagined inadequacies

Two years later,
I laid on the grass outside of my home
I looked up at the perfect blue sky
And I cried
Then I gently laid those letters to rest
Inside of a black, bottomless trash can

But he would never know that,
No,
In his mind I was just a dream girl and
Dream girls can't get hurt.

No,
Dream girls can't get hurt by
Idealized, witty and confusing boys
Who come from up north
And then leave, without a word of truth
To answer the endless, haunting questions.