Where's Veronica?

This morning I thought

about a girl I once

knew in high school and I wondered

whatever became of her,

where did she go?

why did she randomly pop into my mind?

I remember thinking that she was

a tormented soul, trapped in cursed

adolescence with boundless creativity and

nothing but trouble ahead of her.

Did she wind up knocked up, knocked out, or

knocked around?

We were friends you see. Friends at a time

when friendship was the most precious

commodity.  We traded up or down as we

got older, our investments in people changed

as did our sweat equity with others.

Where did those emotional finances go?

She was dark. She was troubled.

She was evolving at what seemed to be

a faster rate than I was. It was something

absolutely remarkable and interesting.

Yet, in the end, after all these years,

I’ve no idea where she wound up.

A teenage boy and a teenage girl,

suffering the malice of puberty in rapidly

changing times. A time of strange potential

and curious discovery, building an intimacy

through mystery.  But never connecting

beyond the demur friendship etiquette demanded.   

I thought about this vanished girl. This woman,

who traveled with me in early teenage misery,

and I wondered where on this huge blue ball she

might be. Do I ever come up in her mental history

or in the checkbook of her past as that one guy

who was there, for a short time, and made a withdrawal?