Together

What's your
favorite color?
favorite candy?
favorite-
You going to sit next to me?

Sly smile
Your specialty
I don't give in
to this
to you
But I do
I can't withhold
my charade
from you

I near you
I'm a man
You're a lion
Fear stricken
I plant myself down

You grin wider
Devilish
but somehow softer
A naughty boyish mask
I can't help it
My emotions paint my face
to match
You slide over
across the concrete seat
Until inches rest between us
Now we whisper

A group shuffles by
Not unusual
as I forgot to mention
we are in a school
Yet we weren't necessarily
admitted out of class
to flirt on the hallway bench

I move away
You pat my previously occupied location
Hedging
for me to reinstate my former position

People can see us together
You say as you appear
next to me
I didn't move again

Nobody had ever
said anything so genuine
to me
Nobody had ever
showed me
what it was like to care
Nobody had ever
appreciated me
like I was appreciated
in that moment

I was never
in a relationship with him
Nor would I
change the past
to display that future
But he taught me
in that moment
what a relationship should mean
He illustrated
what it means to love
to care
to want somebody

For a person who had never been wanted
That simple act
changed my life

-A