Overheard between high schoolers in a department store parking lot: “I got a valentine from Kendra. You know her? Sophomore, blonde.” The height of incredulity, like what business does this bitch have wishing happy any holidays, let alone the chocolate and roses, the red and pink ones. All affected dismissal and can-you-believes to his virgin friends, as if sieves sift hormonal, teenage, impending-armageddon love to be bottled, stoppered and dispersed at leisure to future incarnations of ungrateful children.

No matter how frustrated you become, do not shake the high schoolers, even though Kendra sounds lovely, and don’t you realize this, you clueless fucking child? You are shaking, old man. Climb into your Lincoln, and count ten deep breaths, and drive away.

But my heart pulls strongly outward in all directions and rends itself to raw, red pieces to return to a time of sentimental poems slipped discreetly into lockers by dirty blondes, and wide smiles, and this same heart-rending, and hallway whispers of the love I’ll show you later. Discreet. Always discreet. Never caught in the locker rooms or behind the bleachers and almost caught in the auditorium, but never caught! Invisibility cloaked somehow, impossibly by sun’s surface, the world wants us barred and chained but will never take us alive, entwined love.

But we must scoff at Kendra to save face from friends and hide her notes beneath winter sweaters in the clothes chest only opened for secrets and illicitness, never for clothes, and drift to sleep some night dreaming that we’ll masturbate simultaneously to our poorly concealed/revealed affection for each other, so it will be almost like being together.