My Response to the Reader Prompt by Reader Rhian

Joanne

Prompt:  Write a love letter to a specific person or your dream person

Joanne, you disappeared from my life, suddenly, a long time ago, and I never had the opportunity to say goodbye, or perhaps at least enjoy a few more precious moments together before you vanished completely.

I thought you were easy to find, but more practically, I had a good view of your house, from my family’s picture window which thankfully faced the large school field that separated our two houses by an un-obstructed space with no trees to block my glorious and hopeful view.  My parents told me back then, that I had the eyes of an Eagle, that unfortunately, have since become the eyes of a bat. I think they said that because I could pick things out from looking out at the field in the distance that they couldn’t see, but what they didn’t realize, is that there was a reason I enjoyed spending time looking out of that large picture window:

I was looking for you, across the field hoping you would leave your house and enter your yard perhaps, do a cartwheel for me, or maybe get on your bike and I could jump on my new bike and fly out to meet you. Even when you were not around, I would ride my bike around the streets surrounding the field, riding past your house, looking, but often my search was fruitless. Our meetings, it seemed, rarely happened, and that left a vacuum of unfulfilled desire that stuck like glue on the walls of my young heart for years.

That party your mom made for you and your friends is still in my memory as a special time.  I didn’t know what exotic meant at that age, but I understand now that my soul felt that you had an exotic beauty: a lightly tanned skin and long black hair with alluring dark eyes.  I do remember a clay art piece my mother had, that she bought in Florida, and it was a Polynesian girl with a red hibiscus in her hair.   I knew that the artist must have crafted it while looking at you.

Your mother was playing dance songs for us in the house, and I was doing the “twist” with you, while listening to Chubby Checkers, and well all I remember is you dancing with me, and I remember no one else being there.  Then, I must have walked home across that long, endless field, smiling and seeing your smiling Polynesian face, all the way home.  And then, gently in my dreams as well at night.

In school, at lunch time, I believe we were in the school chorus in fifth grade and as a treat they let us drink glass bottles of our favorite pop, and we sat next to each other, drinking that rare beverage that no one else wanted to drink: Fresca.  Yes, we drank Fresca together and laughed when the bubbles went up our sniffling noses from laughing.

I don’t think we said much to each other. But your quietness was ok with me —it was your eyes that told me we were connected souls, but neither of us knew that it would be gone soon.  Truthfully, Joanne, every day after school, I would look across the field for you, but as time went on, I realized that you were gone. Perhaps it was because we graduated from the sixth grade, and you went to a different junior high school, due to geographic lines drawn by the draconian school system.

I know you were the one for me, my exotic Polynesian goddess of young love, but over the years I have sometimes wondered, after we were suddenly torn apart forever, what happened to you in your life, and whether you ever thought of me too.

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