Pamela was 15.
She was sitting at Ben Frank’s on the Strip,
Clutching a letter she would never have the guts to lick, seal, send.
She would thank God for the downheartedness years later.
She saved herself from a bourgeois trial separation from him in her thirties.
But for now,
She is 15 and in green-love.

She liked when he kissed her.
It felt like he was searching for something inside her mouth.
Salvia nirvana.
Sweet teen endearments.
The days when her studying suffered.
And she wore falsies.
And god, she loved Paul.
She dreamed of meeting him on Piccadilly.
Oxford too.
She had sticky thighs in the summer’s heat,
Spinning the sole record of ’64
Fantasizing that black velvet suit,
Where Ringo would be there too.
A twinge in your temples and pulsed veins,
To be 15 and in green-love,
Whether it be a poster or a boy a block down.
All she could offer was her love and a ride in her parent’s 1959 Chevy Impala.
He was 17 with a topsy-turvy future and ice cube cool friends.
The rapport was an imperative bizarre element a teen girl told herself she sorely lacked,
And it felt like driving without directions on the 405.
But it actually was sitting in his mother’s spic-and-span kitchen on a sparkling afternoon,
Sipping potential and learning hidden talents.
Saying goodnight, but not closing the door you’d sneak out at lights out.
Meditating little games, yet never buying yourself a year.

Pamela was 15 when he retired her for college.
Then and there she wrote her last will and testament.
She declared her life over and him dead.
Because at 15, her life was her boyfriend,
a poster of Paul,
Cleveland High,
dreams of Miss Teen USA,
a date she’d never forget,
hopes of a clear complexion,
freedom with a capital F,
little hair bows that matched shoe bows,
and to gain a bigger chest.

Pamela stormed to her room
Clutching the sole photo of her now ‘dead’ boyfriend.
She announced to her family she was going to stab herself in the heart
But she retreated the butcher-knife idea
When she met a blue mohair empire boy on Sunset.