Bad poetry I wrote as a teenager, Volume XVI

First Love: I don't read the poetry.

Me: That's okay. The people who appreciate it really appreciate it, and that's good enough for me.

First Love: I read the stories, just not the poems.

Me: I don't post any of the ones about you.

First Love: Oh, I don't care about that. Just don't post any of my old love letters.

Me: I still have them all, you know.

First Love: I know.

Me: At my mom's house. In the Boyfriend Box.

Totally unrelated story. In high school, First Love and I both had Ms. Smith for English, only during different periods. One day, he was writing one of the love letters to me during class, and Ms. Smith confiscated it. Later that day, when I arrived in my class, she took a moment at the beginning of class to inform me she had something for me. I went up to her desk, and she handed me the letter, saying loud enough for the class to hear, "I liked the part about…" Can you say, mortification?

Anyway, this poem is not about First Love. Reading over it, I'm not quite sure what it's about. Diamonds. Or rhinestones. Or cubic zirconias. Or love or something.

A crystal gem mistaken for a diamond
Every bit as beautiful
Brilliant, shining
But weak
No one, not even you or I
Saw it for what it really was
It was never scratched across a mirror
Or challenged in any way
Only taken as a diamond
Until one day it fell
Shattered in a million crystal shards
Brilliant, shining
But broken
Remember now my naiveté
Blind eyes that saw a diamond
And wish I never had to know the truth

Here's Volume XV.