Letters to You

McChesney (There is a Boy)

There is a boy
out in that vast night,
one who hold something
far more precious than gold.
There is a boy
down the street from my
lonely little dorm room,
sleeping in what must be
a much less lonely dorm room,
while I lie awake
listening to these rampant thoughts
crisscrossing my mind.
But does he know this?
No, of course not.

There is a boy somewhere
far beyond my grasp,
in all literal and abstract
meanings of the phrase,
who sees not, hears not,
knows not but what is
directly before his beautiful eyes—
no, his completely normal eyes.
I hide, but what else
could be expected of me?
I lack the courage to stand
face to face with this boy,
to stare right into his
open visage, his big eyes,
his wavy hair and
contented smile and say,
boldly and brashly, that—
no, I cannot even
say it to myself.
I cannot afford to
delude myself so naïvely.

There is a boy, so far
across campus that
it may as well be
the largest expanse of Sahara
known to mankind,
who holds the only thing of mine
that I have long struggled to keep.
No matter how hard
I fight to retrieve it,
he dangles it above my head
time and time again, never
relenting for even a moment.
Just when I think I've
gained the upper hand
and started on the path
to forgetting him, he
waltzes back in like
he owns my heart,
my soul, my everything.
It is my heart that
this boy holds, by the by.
It is my eternally bleeding heart.

There is a boy whom
I wish to forget more
than I have ever wished
to forget anything.
There are several instances
that I desperately wish could
be tucked away into the
secret folds of time:
embarrassments and upsets,
fumbles and discords—
but this boy should be
overwritten far before any
of those menial trivialities.
Time and time again, he
tugs at the strings of my heart,
corrupts my thoughts and
fills me with anguish.
Time and time again, I
seek an escape where
I know I will never find one.

There is a boy
far estranged to me,
no matter how much I persist
in my struggle to sway him.
There is a boy
who sees only his own path,
not of those around him
and certainly not of
how his twines with others’
or how his thoughts,
acts, and even mere presence
irreversibly change their lives—
change my life.
But does he know this?
No, of course not;
he never will.