i am once again overthinking every interaction we've ever had

By Divya Maddineni (2025)

i tried to write a poem about everything i knew about him, and then it turned out i didn’t know anything about him. and i don’t think that’s right, because i’ve known him since second grade. i do know something about him. i know what we were.

we didn’t like each other much, because boys and girls can’t be friends without people thinking they like each other too much. and then we did like each other too much, when we were older. still kids, just older. i knew he liked me first. i don’t know if he knew that i liked him back. i definitely know he doesn’t like me now. i don’t like him now, either. except then i heard that someone else liked him and even though he didn’t like her back i saw green not red and i think that maybe there’s a tiny part of me that’ll always like him too much. 

he’s the first person that pops into my head when someone asks about who i’ve liked before. i think maybe he’s my childhood love, even though we were never anything remotely romantic. i think that’s what childhood love is: something pure, falling more on the side of friendship than romance. it’s youth.

he is my youth. he’s every class from elementary school, he’s every smile disguised as a scowl, he’s every mean word said with no malice and all humor. 

every time i look at him, i stiffen and i stare and i look away fast because even though i don’t miss him, i miss the feeling i had when i was with him. and i don’t know if he’s forgotten me and i’m just crazy for thinking all this, but maybe he misses that feeling too. i hope he does. 

i hope one day when we’re forty-two and have careers and are married with families of our own, we meet by chance in a cafe and catch up over coffee. i hope we part ways after that. 

i hope when we’re adults, we can be kids again together. just for a little while.