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I'm Major Jackson and this to the library.

Sheree spent afternoons after school doing her homework there.

I could barely think about anything but her, not my upcoming games, not my algebra homework,

not the transitive properties of acute angles. Not even the high school I would attend after middle

school. Popular songs took on meaning in a way they hadn't before.

Love me in a special way.

What more can I say?

What an immense feeling, to live with a perennial lump in my chest.

Whenever Shirey returned a book to a shelf, I picked it up and skimmed it.

Without giving away my identity, I left notes in the books she read more than once.

She spawned my first flying dream. I flew over houses and landed in her

backyard where we ate pound cake. So you probably figured by now it wasn't love but a crush. Friends, coaches and

family noticed my forlornness. My mom was the first to figure it out.

She encouraged me to say a kind word to Cherie and just talk to her.

Without all the passionate feelings.

I did and it went nowhere.

Now I laughed thinking of my pre-teen self. That fall I began high school I found another girl who sparked amorous feelings.

While I do not aimlessly fall in love anymore,

that spirit of infatuation still makes up my inner disposition as a poet as I encounter life around me.

...