I encountered her for the first time during the feverish summer before high school.
Her name was Infatuation.
One sultry evening, Infatuation and I collided into each other on the corner of Puberty and Libido.
The force of the collision left me gripping my sides in agony.
The mulberry and royal blue bruises multiplied across the surface of my body like Crabgrass.
I mumbled a few apologetic words while Infatuation merely got up and pranced away without a word of acknowledgement.
She was Love’s exuberant and ebullient younger cousin,
Who gazed romantically at the world through her rose colored lenses,
Making everything appear lovelier and more pink that the standard bleak reality,
She never took those glasses off.
Infatuation lived in an eternally pink universe.
When Infatuation strolled down the street, everyone knew who she was.
She had a way of marking her territory, so that when she walked past people, she left a very distinct smell lingering in the air,
Sickly, saccharine, sweet, like sugar coated chocolate caramel fudge brownie ice cream cake.
The next time we saw each other was on the public bus.
Infatuation was sitting cross-legged and wide-eyed, entranced by the dim light of her cellphone and surrounded by shopping bags.
I took a seat next to her, and peeked covertly at her screen
She was reading through old Facebook messages,
Infatuation had a tendency to read between the lines when there was nothing there.
Abruptly, she got up, adjusted her glasses on that round face, re-applied her cherry bomb lipstick, gathered her belongings, and walked out of the bus.
I haven’t seen her since.