sonnet with rick springfield

1. I once made a mix tape that was sixty minutes of "Jessie's Girl."  2. God, I
miss cassette tapes. I miss the hiss of unrequited love.  3. I miss being
fourteen and in love with, yes, my best friend's girlfriend.  4. I was in love
with her at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, as well. I was
in love with her for years after she broke up with my best friend.  5. When I
was twenty, and drinking my way into blackouts, I called her house. I was
too scared to talk to my beloved, who was away at college, but I needed to
confess to her mother.  6. But her father answered. It was four in the
morning.  7. "I'm in love with your daughter," I said.  8. "We know," he said.
He was amazingly polite despite the fact that I'd woken him at dawn-
thirty. He said, "You got lucky. She's here for the weekend. You want to talk
to her?"  9. I'm an indigenous American who has been in romantic love
with half a dozen white women.  10. And only one Indian woman.  11. And
yet, I think of my Indian wife and I as loving like Romeo and Juliet.
Because I grew up on one reservation as a tribal boy and she lived on a
dozen reservations as the daughter of a Bureau of Indian Affairs
superintendent.  12. If you don't understand that conflict, then you just
need to know that the BIA was originally located in the War Department.
13. I was one year sober when I met my wife. I've been sober ever since.  14.
Drunk for the white girls; sober for the Indian woman. Somebody needs to
write a song about that.

    - Sherman Alexie

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