I see her, sitting there, everyday. But it’s not the dull, sleepyheaded, I’m-turning-you-off, shutting-you-out sitting there. She’s alive. She’s ecstatic, and bouncy, and hair-flipping, giggly, passionate. She likes to listen to her iPod and mouth the words. She likes to hand a headphone to her seatmate, her friend, some other girl, most likely an underclassman. They’ll sing and dance together, awake, silly, living-in-the-moment.

I see her every day. She smiles—occasionally in my direction. Her smile, her grin, those milky white teeth, they shine, they glimmer, they flash, blinding, dazzling, perfect.

I think she’s the only thing in this world that doesn’t belong. She’s always her and no one else. She’s always there and nowhere else. She’s completely consistent and routine, but her smiles, her giggles, her poise—never the same. She’s everything. The paradox, the contradiction, the reality, the fantasy, the stars and dreams and hopes, the failures and tears and crushed dreams, broken hearts. She’s everything.

And she’s going to be mine. She’s always on my mind, already belongs to my thoughts. It just takes the right, particular moment, and then she’ll be everything and mine.

We get off at the same stop. She lives two houses down from mine. Her bedroom is on the second floor. Her bathroom window is a slight rectangular portal too high. Her bedroom window is a huge bay window, with lacy windows that sway hypnotically during the hot August nights. That window opens, slides up, calls forth the outside world into her innermost parts. There is a tall, twisted tree that beckons her to the opening, occasionally blessed with her bare feet. She sneaks out some nights; she nimbly winds down around the snaking tree reaching upward from the brittle grass. She lithely glides across the lawn, not disturbing a single blade—she is magic.

How many times have I taken the same path, botched the job, too clumsy against her agile figure? How many nights have I traced her footsteps back, up to the tree, to that bay window, where the lacy curtains sway? How many promises have I made to her, praying to that goddess to let me in, accept me, take me as I am?

Too many times I’ve sat in that twisted tree outside her window, not daring to breathe, not daring to fog up the glass. Too many nights I’ve watched her pearly white, creamy skin rise and fall, dream, peacefully, beautifully sleep. Too many promises I’ve whispered to the pane separating us, keeping me from having her, to the lacy curtains wagging their heads no, telling me to turn away. No. Those are of the past. I will see her, I will love her, I will tell her—

I will climb back down that twisted tree, leave her lacy curtains swaying, my heavy clumsy footstep, marks, patches in her grass, next to her invisible, intangible nonexistent prints. I will turn away from that pane, my whispered fogged on the glass, my promises sliding down the huge bat window like rain drops, like tear drops, like tears form that twisted tree, like tears from her round, crystal eyes, like broken dreams and crushed hearts.

I will see her on the bus every day and watch her be everything. I will sit on the bus and dream of when she’ll be my everything.

Then. She’ll stop.

She won’t be there, gone, down that twisted tree for the final time, swallowed back up by the heavens, called home to her hopes, whisked away off to college. And she’ll never know. And she’ll never feel. And she’ll never cry. She’ll remain otherworldly to the last.

And then I’ll stop.

I won’t be there. I won’t sleep, I won’t eat, I won’t dream, I won’t cry. I won’t watch, I won’t see, I won’t listen, I won’t hear, I won’t fog, or sneak, or disturb, or be a clumsy, daft fool. And I’ll never know. And I’ll never feel. And I’ll never tell. I’ll remain invisible to the end.