I entered the basement with a sigh and tried my best to mute the gladness in my eyes. It was a deep long breath, one that i never would replace.

Though we'd just met I held a memory of her face so fresh and clear, just like a photo in a frame of a girl taken before I ever knew her name. It was a mental snapshot of her high above me on a stage. Back then she'd been like a J.D. Salinger novel; my eyes had never left the page.

Five or six chairs, she went and set them in a row. I sat down and oh, she didn't even know what I was thinking. Soon her voice rang out. For an hour or two or three all eight of us joined in the song until our breath grew short and the evening had grown long.

At the end of the night I walked out past a table full of bowls of popcorn. I climbed the stairs, kicking aside a thumbtack and then I made my way back home on the wings of a downy twilight. Two miles I walked haunted by words that we'd recite in another seven day span, when again I'd see her pale hands mime a pirouette on the keys of her synthesizer.

A few weeks later I was following her home on my bike, the one with the bum rear brake and the gears that had gone on strike. So as one can imagine, I was straining on the hills, though I tried hard not to let her know. I was noticeably out of breath, though, so I suppose it had to show. ("Silly, anxious me," I think now.)

On the way to her house we crossed NE Broadway and cruised the sidewalk of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, which you're really not supposed to do and yet we did it anyway. She asked if that was illegal, and it could be for all i knew, but i vowed to myself that I would not reveal her. I wouldn't let them steal her when they'd arrive to arrest me for the crime of the crush I was cementing on her.

As far as I was concerned the police could lock me away. I just hoped they'd still say I could play my guitar in the cell, where i'd construct a bridge part for the song that i would craft to win her love.

And it would go, "I wish I could squeeze you just like a vanilla sandwich creme, pressing my fingers to your middle. You know it would be a dream watching your sweetness pour out. Oh girl, I surely would be redeemed for all the time I've wasted querying my bedroom walls for the secrets of your foreign heart all during my lonely trip upstream."

Last night in her car I pulled a cassette out of its case; I won't deny the subtle glow that took her face. When she recognized those chords to a song that was her own, I was scared we'd crash, but luckily she got me home without a scratch. Then the song came to its end, a recording of my voice with her words, and the vehicle was silent once again.

I rolled down the window since the door had to be opened from the outside. I popped out the tape and quickly stammered a goodbye. I didn't want her to drive away, but I couldn't tell her so, so I stepped aside and closed the door behind me. I watched the rain then blindly dance from the road as the wheels began turning.

A knot in my throat, cramped by the words that were burning, it released to an audience of myself and the lampost, making light of my unrequite, alone on the front porch thinking, "I thought I'd never feel this way again."

Oh, I wish I could squeeze her like a vanilla sandwich creme, pressing my fingers to her middle. I know it would be a dream watching her sweetness pour out. I know I surely would be redeemed for all the time i spent there staring at her bedroom walls so enraptured by her foreign art, knowing my hopes were not obscene.

And she could take that or leave it, but i'm for taking it all the way. I'm serious, you wouldn't believe the sides I took when we were alone today: I went from assuming her glances to be no more than cursory to thoughts that the only reason she doesn't read my mind aloud is 'cause she's just not brave enough, because she's afraid just like me. But of course, as always, i could be mistaken.