poem of the day 07.16.14

wanda

wanda was tall and lean

she was corn-fed

and came from the middle of pennsylvania

she was the first girl i laid eyes on in college

after doing four years of time

in an all-boys catholic high school

i used to sit in general writing class

and watch her play with her long, curly black hair

while she rubbed one foot off of the other and took notes

as the professor talked his game about wendell berry

maybe if wendell berry had long, curly black hair…

i stalked wanda on campus

i never meant it to be creepy

i wanted to talk to her but i could never figure out how

because for me talking to a girl

asking them for something as simple as getting a cup of coffee

was akin to asking their hand in marriage

so i was the idiot who walked ten paces behind

or needed the water fountain when wanda was done

or happened to be going into the men’s room

when she was going into the women’s

i was far, so very far from making a case for romance

once i had it in my head to ask her out

i waited for wanda to leave class

but then i became paralyzed

i couldn’t move

even the professor left before me

something grabbed me and made me get up

i tore down hallways and stooge-skidded around bends

on a stairwell i saw the top of wanda’s curly, black hair

three flight down

and i went for it

pushing past coeds and missing a step or two

on the last flight i decided to jump nearly the whole thing

i ended up slamming off a wall

and cracking my knee off of the concrete

wanda got away

and i ended up at the doctor’s two days later

with orders to take it easy for at least a week

there’d obviously never been a wanda in his life

by some miracle

i ended up asking her out right before christmas break

we got a cup of coffee

and sat with each other for nearly an hour

hardly saying a goddamned thing

we had nothing in common

and i didn’t know what to do

it was like catching a fish

and not knowing how to reel it in

so we flopped around words and circumstances

while i thought that it was such a grand success

just being somewhere public with a woman

and eventually wanda left for her last class

thanking me for the coffee

even though she only drank half of her cup