I was fourteen and had only recently discovered that girls were endlessly fascinating. There was a girl named Paula in my class. She was small and dainty. Her face was narrow and foxy and I couldn’t, for the life of me, stop staring at her.

I was terrified. I wanted desperately to be in love but Paula was one of the popular kids. Boys fluttered around her like flames dancing on the edges of a fire. They knew how to make her laugh. They knew how to bring her in. Envy and fear combined to turn me to water.

After months of agony, I took the plunge. My father, a charming man, a salesman, told me that women loved poetry. “That’s how I got your mother’s attention,” he said.

I was fourteen, so I suspected my father of being completely out of touch, but I was young enough to take his advice.

For two weeks, I worked on the poem. I found rhymes and I found words. I pieced them together like a promise or a prayer maybe. I worked hard and I sweated and then it was done. Still, I was scared. What if it didn’t work? What if she laughed?

The day came. I woke and told myself I would do it. I went to school and I sat in the cafeteria watching Paula. I went to class and Paula was there and I stared some more and then it was lunch time. Paula sat with the football boys at a table in the corner. I went to her. Sweat ran in thick streams along my spine. My hands shook. The room blurred out and I could barely breathe.

The original plan was to stand on a table and exclaim the poem from the top of my lungs, but something happened to me. My body was no longer my own. Instead of the grand romantic gesture I stumbled up to her and thrust the poem in her face.

“Bill,” Paula said.

She knew my name!

“Read this,” I said. “Please.”

I walked away. I went to my table across the room and put my head down. Everything spun and danced and I felt like I was going to pass out. I sat there trying hard to breathe like a normal boy when Paula came to me.

“Bill,” she said. “This is beautiful.”

I swallowed and nodded, not trusting my mouth to say the right thing.

“No one’s every written a poem for me before,” she said.

This was going better than I thought. A bit of the fear dissipated. My hands, still numb, no longer felt like they were going to fall off. She smiled.

“Do you think you could write another?” she asked.