Prompt – Your Earliest Crush
April was her name. I was twelve. She was beautiful, or at least the memory of her is, softened by distance and the way time edits what it can no longer hold. Her father was a TSgt, and they lived a few houses down from us on Plattsburgh Air Force Base, close enough that it was easy to accidentally run into her when I wanted. Her mother looked like an older echo of April, same features but worn thinner, as if life had pressed its thumb into her for too long. Years of folding a life into cardboard boxes every eighteen months had settled into the lines of her face. Some military wives learned how to pack without leaving bruises behind. She never quite did.
April and I went to the same junior high school but did not have any of the same classes together. I had to see her around the neighborhood if I wanted to see her. I saw her at the bus stop. I saw her when I went to her house to collect payment for the newspaper that month. I saw her when I was walking to the South Side Trails to hang out with the boys. I saw her often; she never saw me.
My crush on April looked like an orbit. I circled her life quietly, measuring my day by the chance of passing through her gravity. I practiced conversations in my head that never left my mouth. I changed the speed of my bike when I thought she might be outside. I learned the dance of pretending not to care while caring so much it felt like a fifty pound secret I carried in my chest.
I do not remember a single real conversation between us. What I remember is the anticipation of a conversation, the sharp awareness of my own body whenever she was near, and the sudden self-awareness about my red hair, about weight, about how to stand or where to put my hands. But, alas, nothing. It was not like she was not cruel. She was simply living her own best twelve-year-old life, and I was learning the quiet math of a one way conversation.
My crush on April never really began or ended; it just faded the way base housing always did, quietly replaced by the next season of trying to belong somewhere. The invisibility was not new. I had been practicing it long before her. She just gave it a face I could not ignore. Looking back now, I laugh a little at that twelve-year-old version of me pedaling past her house like it meant something cosmic. Jesus Almighty. I thought one girl noticing me might repair everything that felt unfinished inside my chest. It was never about April. It was about a boy who wanted proof that he existed outside his own head. The truth is harsher and cleaner now. Nobody arrived to make me whole. I learned to stand there, unseen, and open anyway.
Muddled Soma 