First Love 3

When Beth and I broke up, that's when strange things started happening. Girls like Linda and Robin started to find me attractive. It occurred to me that they had read some of my notes to Beth. They were so kind and understanding with me. It was a little bit unreal. Why were so many people showing me kindness and love all of a sudden?

My heart had been broken. In my adolescent way, I had vowed to never love again. Beth was my first love and the pain she had caused me by breaking up would never be healed?

Then all these other girls were showering me with affection... did they see a heart in me, a heart worth saving?

That year, my family move to North Carolina. Curiously, I received a letter from Beth. It was a very sweet letter but she acted like we had never broken up. We had. The letter did not feel real, like something written just because.

Later I would call her. I wanted to tell her something but I was not sure what. I spoke to her for a while and then I spoke of perhaps not writing those poems for her, but for some idealized girl of my imagination. She started to cry for what seemed like hours. I felt so terrible, but I was glad that I had hurt her for terrible hurt she had given me.

I would visit her once after that. I was attending summer school at University of Pennsylvania. I visited her, wondering if the old feelings of love would return. The feelings had disappeared into thin air. I felt nothing when I kissed her. We both had changed, changed terribly.