October 15th, 2015 - Steven C. Wright

This is not a love story. This is the first semester of community college. This is realizing that mom was right to suggest you get your Associate’s before going to Rutgers. This is a much smaller campus. This is much better for you, because you are easily intimidated. This is still intimidating. This is mom being right, but knowing that she already knows she is right, so there is no point in saying anything to dad. This is wondering if your pursuit of further education is making their marriage worse.

This is not about mom and dad. This is the year before you become a technically-not-child of divorce. This is your eighteenth year. This is your public speaking class. This is that first assignment where you had to introduce yourself through a small presentation. This is a little too early for an academic identity crisis. This is the realization that you are not interesting enough to be whittled down to a statement, let alone a performance. This is an overthought actualization nightmare. This would, however, be the funniest circumstance to come out of the closet to. This is you thinking about actually saying it, “I’m gay,” in your first college project.

This is not your coming out story. This is your closet. This is your mental health. This is the racking of your brain about what defines you, and deciding it is the racking of your brain. This is making an outline of your speech. This is presenting first on Thursday. This is turning to your class and saying, “I have lost the last year of my life to OCD.” This is before you lose more years to it. This is overexplaining the concept of a panic disorder. This is most of your presentation. This is who you think you are. This is talking about your dog to cool the tension. This is being unaware that she will die next semester.

This is not about your dead dog. This is you getting back to your seat. This is feeling like an oversharer. This is the hot wash of uncertainty. This is the old man (twenty-two years old!) who sat next to you in class. This is him leaning over, whispering, “Thank you for that. You are really brave.”  This is gratitude from a knowing stranger. This is knowing that was hard for him to do. This is warmth in brown eyes. This is wanting to cry. This is wanting a hug you do not ask for. This is the chill down your spine that still feels cold. This is a feeling you do not understand. This is making friends with him, but not getting his number. This is you catching feelings at the end of the semester. This is remembering his name, but not saying it out loud. This is looking for his Instagram, and finding nothing. This is never seeing him again. This is you falling for a ghost.

This is not a call for a missed connection. This is your missed connection.

This is not a love story. This is just love. This is just a story.

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Steven C. Wright (he/him) is a queer poet and prose author from Edison, New Jersey. He has a B.A. in English from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and runs a small poetry workshop group every week. His work has appeared in Frontier Poetry, Serotonin Press, BRAWL, and elsewhere.