(JCH -- 1991)
Jeni Rose, of all the nights to remember, I  thought of you tonight.
Someone professed an interest in me  but I backed away, playing the fool.
Once home, I ran to my room looking  for the weathered shoe box  that houses your letters.
I’ve had to stop myself from burning them countless times over the past few yrs.
stopping myself only upon the realization that these few, impersonal
souvenirs are the only evidence that we ever existed as one.
I don’t remember talking to you on the phone.
No one knows about our spot at the lake
or the time we spent hours just looking at each other  across the table at the Huddle House
 when we didn’t have enough money  to go anywhere else
or how I got my car stuck in the mud--twice!
But tonight I told myself I would burn them.
I have to go on, I told myself and the mere presence of those letters...

But I’ve searched and I’ve searched and I can’t find them. The letters exist.
They are in my room but out of my reach  like the memories of us together.

Jeni Rose, where did our stars go?
Do you remember the stars and how they danced for us during endless summer nights at the lake?
You said you’d never feel the same. He hurt you, you said, like one  had been hurt before.
His words cut you in the night, left you bleeding,  and the salt from your tears  still sting.

How utterly silly it is!
Look at me.
All the bullshit about how I was going to be
Somebody.
Get a load of me now!

What happened to our dreams,
Jeni Rose?
I’m stuck in a web of consistency.
I’m still the same boy I was then
While you’re married with a kid in the way.
Now I ask you, who has it worse?
You said you’d never get married
And I said I’d get out of this town.

And as I remember you tonight, it occurs to me that sometimes things never change.
And sometimes you have to work at it.

And sometimes memories are the only thing to get us through.

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