You have always stood in the shadows;
Hidden by a curtain of darkness;
I have never really seen you;
Yet I have always known you were there,
As a result, there has always been the real you,
And then there was the you of my imagination;
I would always wonder if the two were ever the same.
Once while was sitting in a classroom
a young lady Walked past with the scent of your perfume;
although I never knew the name of your perfume,
I was thrown into an olfactory confusion.
A beautiful September day, many, many years ago,
You stood giggling in the doorway of our Gymnasium,
I was approached by a boy I knew,
said this girl he knew, wanted to meet me.
But this girl only wanted to introduce me to you,
As if she had already known me.
Strangely I already knew of you,
From another boy who also knew me,
This boy was a friend,
Who had once bragged about knowing you?
Yet, I still made your acquaintance,
I asked if you knew this other boy who was friend to me,
You quickly dismissed him as only a casual person you knew,
As if to say in whatever way you may know him,
You still wanted to get to know me.
When the recess bell had rung, and as I ran to my class,
I looked back and I could only see your shadow.
I started to run back, to get another look at you,
But you had disappeared into the wilderness of other students.
Later, when I was at home, sitting on the couch;
Listening to WWDM, and I could hear Ernie Isely’s guitar,
And the Isely’s were singing who’s that lady.
And the song became a question that
would never be satisfactorily answered.
You would later become a profound mystery to me,
You would do things that I could never understand,
Whenever I thought I was about to understand you,
You would do something that would disabuse me of that illusion.
Then, I finally realized that there was the real you,
And then there was the you I imagined you to be.
I’m not sure if the two were ever the same.
In the end, all I was left with was my imagination of you,
But when I reflect upon it now,
I realize that It wasn’t such a bad thing.
I have learned, in this life, that sometimes
Imagination is better than reality.
ME