In 1979 I met someone amazing. I was 18, and she was 15, but it’s not what you’re thinking. Despite the fact that she was both emotionally and physically mature for her years, I didn’t feel a physical attraction. But we worked together almost every day for a long “beach resort town” summer. And I drove her home every single night. We talked and shared a lot, and enjoyed each other’s company.

But when she went home for the winter (as is common in beach resort towns) I couldn’t but consider that I had feelings, and the coming summer would be my opportunity to explore and express whatever such feelings might be.

So come summer, I waited for her to arrive, a year older. But what actually arrived was the knowledge that a child playing with a gun had put a bullet through her head, hundreds of miles away. But because I never saw her lying in a coffin, I chose to believe that as long as I didn’t believe in her death she would still walk up to me some day, as long as I never stopped believing. For most of 30 years, to varying degrees…..

For reasons too complex to address but involving giving up on her despite the lack of evidence of her death, I felt responsible. After 15 years I expressed that in a poem, as you did. (Though not of remotely the same quality or emotion.) And then, another. So after 30 years, expressing my feelings in poetry went a long way toward setting me free of my loss and guilt.

And poetry freed me of the blame I had felt for so long. And now realizing that our (yours and mine) feelings of pain and guilt overlapped somehow makes sense, helps me understand something we may have shared somehow.

Thank you for sharing something so personal.