39
IT’S NICE NOT TO BE A BOULDER ANYMORE, not to have to sit still while the whole world whirls past in flashes of color and light, and the wind and tides rush in and out around me. Things with Caleb are still a little fragile, but now that we’re talking again, the dull gray ache inside has eased a bit. My smiles aren’t painted on. Laughing feels less like heaving bricks and more like tossing confetti.
Sometimes, anyway.
Other times, the fog condenses around me again. Because there’s still Jamie. Jamie, who I only see from afar, but who I can’t stop thinking about. Just like it was in the very beginning. Except then she didn’t know I existed, and now she hates me. I don’t know which is worse. Actually, I do. It was better when she didn’t know I existed, because at least then there was hope. And even though my heart hurts every time I see her, I go out of my way to be where I know she’ll be just so I can torture myself with a glimpse of her crossing the quad or walking down the breezeway.
I’ve written countless texts and emails, some in my head and some on my devices, but I haven’t had the guts to send anything. I have imaginary conversations with her multiple times a day. I walk past her classrooms, past her locker, past her table at lunch, just to be where she’s been. I haven’t looked at her long enough for her to catch me looking, so I have no idea if she knows I’m stalking her—I mean, that I’m not over her. She’s surrounded by a force field that I just can’t break through.
One afternoon, Mom gives me a book of poetry written by Japanese courtiers, way back in the year 1000. She says that nobles back then used to have poetry-writing contests to see who could best express a certain feeling, or describe a certain scene, and they would send poems called tanka to each other instead of letters—or even instead of talking. But they had to be short, just a few lines. Thirty-one syllables. The idea was to capture and communicate the essence of what you felt.
“Like text,” she says. “Or twittering.”
“Tweets.”
“Yes. But not so many every day. That’s not challenge. Only two or three. Or maybe only one in a week, if the other person was far away.”
“Instead of letters? But that leaves so much to misunderstand.”
“Japanese people can understand. Each person spent time to think about the best words so the reader can understand. The careless person throws the lots of words—talking is so easy to throw out the wrong words. Tanka makes you think. Now you know why the Japanese people don’t talk so much about the feelings.”
I imagine noblewomen writing tanka-letters to someone, just one or two a day, taking time over each one to get it just right. Kind of like the poetry notebook I had with Jamie.
That’s when I get my idea.
I spend a week trying to write a poem like the ones in my new book, but after a while I realize that loving poetry and being a good poet are two very different things. Everything I think of is cheesy, or it doesn’t say what I want it to say, or it’s too long and boring. You’d think, since it’s so short, that poetry would be easy. Not so much.
But I’m not giving up.
I go through my journal with a pack of post-it notes. I spend an entire weekend on poetry websites, chasing poets and poems down rabbit holes and through a maze of related poems, related poets, biographies, and analyses. Talk about a time suck—there’s a ton of cool stuff out there, but only a tiny bit of it says exactly what I want. By Sunday night, I have what I need. I hope.
I have to dig deep for the courage to do it, but on Sunday, I tell Reggie, Elaine, and Hanh that I’m still head over heels for Jamie and that I want to get back together with her.
“Duh,” says Elaine.
“Finally,” says Reggie.
“Why are you always so late with your own news?” asks Hanh.
“Whatever. So I need your help.” And I tell them my plan. I need one more person, so I ask Caleb, but he turns me down.
“You want me to help you win back the girl you left me for? Uh, too soon. Timing, remember? Work on it,” he says. But not unkindly.
So I text Janet and recruit her to help. I text Caleb later and tell him I’m sorry about my terrible timing. He texts back:
Shut up already. Know when to stop talking
. . .
Don’t worry
Still friends
I’ve chosen six poems to deliver to Jamie on Monday: one before school, one for each of the four block periods, and one for lunch. I know that a thousand years ago this process of sending poems to your beloved would have taken a week instead of a school day, but I’m too excited to drag it out that long.
I’ll start with “Missing you” by Izumi Shikibu, a court lady who was born in 976:
Missing you,
my soul escapes my body
and wanders, glowing
like the fireflies in the marsh.
I write it as neatly as I can on rice-paper stationery that I found in Japantown, and tuck it into an envelope.
“When You See Water” by Alice Walker is next, for how indefinable Jamie is, how unrestricted by categories, and how no one else could be anything like her.
After that, “Poem” by Lucy Ives. It’s about how you can tell yourself to stop loving someone who doesn’t love you back, but you still can’t help loving them.
Then “Elliptical” by Harryette Mullen. For all those things left unsaid, all those things I could have done, thought, and tried differently, all those questions about intentions and how things could have been.
“Scientists Find Universe Awash in Tiny Diamonds” by Mayne Ellis because of how precious Jamie is to me, and how valuable and unique and connected by beauty we all are.
Finally, “I Ask the Impossible” by Ana Castillo. Because that’s what I’m about to do.
40
I ARRIVE AT SCHOOL WELL BEFORE THE FIRST bell with the poems in my backpack. I go to Jamie’s locker and tape the “Missing you” to the door, to make sure she doesn’t overlook it if she’s in a hurry. Feeling like I’m committing a crime (“a crime of loooove,” I can hear Hanh croon), I steal away, heart racing. There’s nowhere I can hide to see if Jamie gets her poem, and I’m so full of nervous energy, I can’t even pull together enough focus to sustain a walk around the quad, so I pace back and forth in front of the trig classroom until class starts.