Happy Birthday to the Man Who First Proposed to Me

I was 17 and it was dark inside the room,
almost summer but not quite, but I felt safe
and loved and certain that my life
would never be the same again.
In retrospect, it all was true, up to a point,
but life's river did not flow the way we'd
thought it would (and that's the understatement
of the year). He said it softly, "Will you
marry me?" and I said "Yes," but in the end,
I didn't. Still friends these almost forty
summers later, he is single once again,
and I am not but tease him, texting, to make
sure the second Mrs. B is lots of fun, because
that is the word that best describes most of our time
together. Fun is almost always something
to remember fondly, as I do remember him.
We were always dating on my birthday, but
never much on his, the off-and-on of what we
had in high school so uneven in this way as
love that young between two people so unformed
and incomplete is apt to be.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013