Sage

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sage

Sage visited Parker as a prospective student in seventh grade.
Class president, I was conducting a meeting early in the day, playing with my yoyo, her bright blue eyes watching from the floor.
We spoke on the phone a few times and clicked. We started going out in March of 1988.

She went to another school, Anshe Emet, that was real small. Our social lives revolved around different people, we only saw each other outside of a school context.

Two weeks into the relationship, I fooled around with Katie Brennan, an old friend from Parker. We went further sexually than Sage and I did in the next few months. I think I held Sage up on too high a pedestal. She was the first woman I concertedly composed over (not counting Leigh). I gotta find them things.
The relationship lasted for months, my infidelity becoming more and more of a personal issue as the weeks went on - my secret guilt. When I fooled around with Katie, it didn't seem a big deal in any context. As I began to obsess over Sage, it became my original sin.
Her mom loomed large in our relationship. Her license plate read "SAGE 75." She would sit me down on the couch and talk with me for hours, while Sage would be chilling in the other room, on the phone.
Mom took me to Greece at the start of summer '88. While I was there, I composed a late night candle light red penned confession to give to her upon my return.
Sage had already found out I'd fooled around with Katie. She was really into Jesse, when I got back she called me from his house.
She was dumping me, he picked up the slack.
Man, was I bummed. Half an hour of tears and knives and brinks of this and that. I spent the summer pining over her and wondering if I'd ever find love again. Oh! Thirteen!

Sage's mom and I went to see Bull Durham together after we broke up. She wore turquoise stretch pants. I was pretty freaked out - it wasn't a good movie choice (or maybe it was?).
Sage and I didn't talk much after that point. I dreamt about her in 1991.
She transferred to Parker for high school. In spite of our former attraction, we didn't communicate much. Every once in a while, she'd pull me over and show me her modeling portfolio, I'd get wistful, she'd go off with the latest nike-clad stud.
My first year of college, I found out that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, at the age of 19.

The End of the Innocence. (11/18/93)

What was worse?
Her having past in to mortality,
or the thought of it?
Like slow rain,
or fine mist
Like strung out steel guitar
es muy guapo, muy raro.
Retreat into rage!
rage
rage
against the coming of the night
On behalf?
of a soft-spoken little girl
with pierced breast
and faith in ignorance
Quiet - the room
wherein lie the memories
and the sleeping girl
body wracked by cough,
mind afloat
beyond all mundane tumors.
Where had her memory escaped to?
Hidden recesses, opened up to let her in,
and dull her memory,
still innocent, I cannot even
shudder
at the prospect of her passing
as last minute hopes and fantasies
flood those recesses
leaving behind little,
but mental-ache.
Savage, cruel,
my mind finds any fate,
or god,
that would wish this,
but I know there's none -
there's only me
and her.
And one other,
many other's
taking back and proclaiming
the night - their place
in my haunted musings.
Her triumphant return
to a place of prominence,
she continues, softly
to distract and encourage
my innocence,
cries victory,
sobs triumphantly
- I could give a shit.
Thank goodness,
(though there be little)
that others can distract me -
for I grow tired of the same marathon,
I have been training for since
I entered true innocence
perched between her indian-style legs
on a caked beige carpet.
Empty fluid,
juice - they say -
that runs plentiful - so I heard -
between my fingers
never, for an inspired soul.
So few
many memories
so few
of worth or note
is our relationship
none.
So,
upon reflection,
it all seems to be
so wonderfully poetic.
Perhaps I should address myself,
memories make such wonderful
shapes,
like clouds,
subject to interpretation,
within the critic,
forms that died
with the innocence.

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