“The right person, the wrong time

The right script, the wrong line

The right poem, the wrong rhyme

And a piece of you that was never mine”

I met her the winter of 1997. Snow clung to all of the trees, and the branches groaned underneath the weight. I met her in the winter of 1997, just as the first bell for school rang, its loud clang vibrating in the air. She was wearing a yellow jacket, yellow rainboots, and a yellow bow in her hair. I had never liked the color yellow before - in fact, I had cringed when my mother offered me yellow backpacks, notebooks, lunch boxes. But this time I didn't shy away.

She said her name was Stephanie around a mouthful of sandwich, the sound muffled by her food. But I understood anyways. And I felt like maybe I understood the girl in yellow, too.

But then we were in middle school, and I heard by word of mouth that she was in love with someone. She was crushing hard. You could see her at the edge of the basketball court, watching him with those big blue eyes of hers. Sometimes he said hi to her. Most times he didn’t. She didn't seem to notice anyways - he was just perfect. That's what all the girls said. He was so cute. His brown eyes were dreamy. And I realized I wasn't any of those things; but I wanted to be for her. I did the things she wished he would do. And it didn't matter a bit.

Until she went to that Halloween party with me. Until we found ourselves alone, secluded. I saw then, something in her eyes, something that wanted me to make a move. Her white makeup got on my cheeks as I kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. But I moved too fast, moved right when she wanted me to move left, and she pulled away, angry like the slap she left on my cheek as she left. I was following the script but I didn't understand my cue. I came out onto the stage too fast and made a fool of myself, the crowd laughing as I stood there dumbfounded. Confused.

Then she was in college. And she was writing for a contest. I helped her over the phone, supplied her with a line here and there. I quoted Shakespeare. Hoped it would mean something -anything- and help me win the girl. But she took them as just lines, and not as feelings. She wrote the poem. She thanked me. And I wanted to scream - I'm sorry I'm an idiot. I didn't understand years ago. Now you don't understand. And I felt the girl in the yellow coat, with the blue eyes and the reddish hair, slip away through misunderstanding and confusion and years of separation. And I gave up on the girl.

I found another girl to call my love - she giggled at my jokes. She thought it was sweet when I quoted poems. She liked watching plays. She knew all the lines. The girl I met at a coffee shop came to be my wife. She saw my entrance before I even made one. She was waiting for me up on the stage, watching the crowd with a frozen smile on her face. And when I walked out hesitantly towards her, she gave me an encouraging smile. She knew all the lines - all my lines.

And then I saw the girl with the yellow coat, now the woman with the crying two-year-old. She struggled with the baby on her hip, her laugh revealing crows feet. She was old - she was a woman. But she was her.

And as we talked in the middle of the grocery store about life since high school, college; I knew I had said all the wrong things. I wasn't what she wanted after all. I thought I had a piece of her in my heart, I thought there was a piece of me in her soul. But I understood then, as she walked away, asking her little girl if she was ready to see her daddy, that the little girl in the yellow coat, the high school academic with her nose in a book, the woman who crossed a stage to a diploma, walked the aisle to the man of her dreams, was never mine. There was no piece of me in her being. There was no piece of her in my bones. There was a piece of her that was never mine - every smile, every look, every kiss - none of it was ever mine.

And I oddly didn't feel upset about it; I just walked home to someone who was mine.