Halloween

in wonderland

1989 had just come out,
and it's funny to me now,
that my obsession with you 
was born like seven Taylor Swift albums ago.
I don't know where the time's gone.

I went to Target with my mother after school,
though I can't remember why now
(I think it might have been to get some Halloween candy though)
but all the kids were already in costume
so we had to navigate through a sea
of very breakable little monsters and ghosts.

The album was wrapped in plastic, a big display.
I liked how you could see just the lower half of her face
but my mind was somewhere else.
Later I would listen to the album on a long car ride
and the words and melodies would make me think of you somehow
and it's so funny to me
because now it's so obvious but at the time 
I just could not think why.

That same day too Sophie approached me at lunchtime.
She looked like she could have been in high school too,
she was only like nineteen but a little genius
who'd graduated five years early
and then pursued a life of traveling and teaching yoga.
She breathed life into the world, into me,
with her serene teachings and all her talk of peace.
A year and a half later I would do a workshop with her
where she would talk all about sacred sex
brag she could write a book on conscious s&m
and I would feel worse about myself than I did before I came.

It's funny to me now,
the things I didn't know yet that day at sixteen
and I ate my favourite sandwich from the local organic market
and tried not to stain my fingers with cranberries
cause they were baked into the bread.
It's so funny to me,
how I was too shy to admit 
the butterflies in my stomach
were not because of your makeup but how
I thought you were the most beautiful creature 
I had seen in my life
and even then, I wanted so much to kiss you.
I don't think about you nearly as much as I did
back then, but some days I still do.