Star crossed lovers

Star crossed lovers.
She stood in that doorway. And I was there with her. I knew which way my heart pulled. She did too. I couldn't let us sit together, or I'd risk losing my mind. Or worse, my impulsive, juvenile, bleeding heart. As soon as I thought I had escaped the gravity of those lovely doe eyes, she gave them to me. Then, like an immature chihuahua on a leash, she pulled me back to her. And there I was again. Sitting, breathing, thinking by her in that doorway. My heart pounding by her. In that cursed, blessed trigonometry class.

I spent classes, which turned to days which turned to an agonizing two weeks-nearly, (give or take an eternity in my own thoughts) wondering what it would be like to hold her hand: At the grand haven pier in the warm michigan summer; walking down an alleyway in Venice, and hearing a sad violin down the road; at a beautifully crafted altar with narcisi
hanging all about it; and on a hospital bed with tubes and patches all over my withering body. It all seemed so lovely. All of the sudden I was there again with her. Her and I. In trigonometry class. She put down her pen and looked into my heart. And I put down my head and looked in the same direction. The council between my mind and body ended in this resolution: It is no longer an option to live without her. I had laughed too many times at her cutely witty jokes. I couldn't stand witnessing her warm smile melt others hearts and know hers could soon be theirs. Each day I sat there in trigonometry class and fell madly into love with the same -beautiful- woman.

Suddenly, I was bringing her back to her host parents' home in fruitport. I was in the clouds, but my cursed teenage anatomy graced me with a smell exactly like that of a man with roses hidden behind his back and a diamond ring in his clammy palm. Thankfully, she rescued me from my relentless self doubt. And when she did this, it never resurfaced again. She spoke hurriedly and with her beautiful accent, "I'm not ready to go home yet."
"Then we won't," I responded before her sentence was even over. We rode to the park. Sadly the sweet song that had been swinging my emotions in a circle the past few days came on. I needed her hands to pass through that dreadful doorway, so I took them. We kissed. We kissed passionately and longer than I care to recall. It was around half of a thousand heartbeats--or so. Finally, It was done. I had traded souls with an Italian angel. And all the goodness in the world was not only visible, but bright and glowing. I knew then our future. I knew I needed to share each moment with her. She would beat life and love into my body. And she would do it perfectly for sixty-eight years. I told her "Not time nor politics nor war; Nothing will erode our love. We will be the heroes of our generation. The heroes of love--And the heroes of hope."

She laid in my arms then. And she laid in them for the next 3 months. Overjoyed, romanced, bewitched, all seemed grand words to describe my measly however intensely lovely feelings. I had only simply discovered heaven on earth. We dated and danced and laughed and loved. Beauty and serenity seeped into my life before I knew it. Roses were more red and hugs were more warm. And that emptiness, the absence of all that colorful chaos was a thing of the past. Now, she made me feel always at home.

She moved back to her home in Rome as normal exchange students do. The abnormal thing she did though, was leave a piece of her heart inside a boy named me. It was hard to say goodbye. She cried as she drove away and I shed a tear for her, one for me. and one for the uncertainty that we would be truly together again. She gave me her heart. I gave her, in return, my word. It wouldn't be the last time we would see each other.

Days; weeks; months; lonely moments in the fall; lovely ones whenever we could escape in each other; time melted away for a seemingly eternal 21 months. Nearly all of it spent a phone call away.  One would think my soul to wither, and hers to grow heavy. But star crossed lovers as we may be, I am always happy. I call her vv. And she calls me baby. Surely, I will die with love on my lips and, if I can pass perfectly, my hands on her hips--Because she is all I could ever ask for. I am hers. And she is mine.