The first stanza of this is especially beautiful. Another one of those amazing "paintings" I've been talking about. You have such an eye for detail. I imagine in real life you must just soak up everything around you, walking around just taking everything in.

[wincing. / maybe next time.] This part makes me laugh. Well, not so much like "ha ha ha!" But it's cute and humorous. The last stanza about the dude frying rice is also rather humorous in a cute, sweet way.

[sverving] What is this word? I tried to find it in the dictionary but couldn't. Was it supposed to be "swerving?"

[heels leading / my thoughts in amazon wanderings, mapless] I really like these lines.

[It’s too bad that kissing a boy / is not a strategic manuever.] Since when is it not? I mean, it shouldn't be, but nowadays it seems that way. I value kisses; I think they're special and a person shouldn't just go around locking lips with anybody. Sadly, though, that's how it is most of the time. I know several people who can't even count how many girls or guys they've kissed. At the end of every date, even if they've just recently met, they're making out. Heck, even the friends with benefits thing goes on now, kissing just for the sake of kissing. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think a kiss should be the pinnacle of the whole "I really like you" stage. Though of course there are people out there who refuse to kiss anybody until the day of their wedding, which seems a little extreme.

I understand what the girl in the poem is getting at, though. Solideogloria seemed to believe that the girl and guy are good friends, and that the girl is wanting to take that next step, but can't gather the courage. Should she actually plant a big wet one on the dude, it'd totally change their friendship, either by making things incredibly awkward or by turning it into something more serious, i.e.: a relationship. I've been in that situation before with a very close friend. I'd start feeling things I didn't really want to feel, and would ignore them, but at times I'd start thinking "what if?" and would even contemplate just randomly making a move one day to show her how I felt, but it was never nothing more than a fantasy. I don't have the guts to do something like that. But just knowing that something like a kiss would be an all or nothing move, where it'd either totally work or ruin everything . . . I don't know, kinda intimidating. Too bad it couldn't be simpler, like a "strategic manuever."

I'm not so sure it's the girl who has the feelings, though. A part of me believes that this guy and girl are already in a relationship. The guy is the one that seems to have feelings, calling the girl "cute" and all. We picture her with her hair all disheveleved, her nose and cheeks red- she seems to be wearing an exasperated expression, so it isn't like she's very "cute" at the moment. She isn't even really in the moment with him, as she confesses that "only half" of her is lying "down footsteps next to his." I mean, she admits to not being in love. She's talking about her "countdown (...) of chances to fall in love with him." I don't get the feeling that she has much of an attraction at all to this dude. So it isn't a countdown where she's losing chances to tell him how she feels . . . It's really more the dude's countdown. The girl doesn't seem to be feeling him. They're in a relationship already, but if things don't change soon, the girl will be moving on.

And then there's the dude in the last stanza. That could very well be the same guy as in the first stanza, but I doubt it. The fact that she's kinda checking the "frying rice" dude out is another bad sign for Mr. First Stanza, though it's also pretty funny.

But maybe that's just my pessismistic view of love and relationships. Maybe solideogloria's theory was more accurate.

Either way, this is another great poem!

Aww Beti... never never stop writing poetry, okay? :) It's been way too long since I visited your site. Reading your poetry again is like coming home.

I so often think of your writing as "poignant", and almost stunningly real, because you're able to gather all the little details that most people notice in real life but overlook in their writing, and you weave them together into something we can almost breathe and taste and feel. I can see this boy and this girl, and more importantly, I can see her heart.

I've definitely experienced the doomed longing for a friendship to become something more - and of course it didn't, and I think I knew all along that it wouldn't. That seems to be what this story is talking about. In the simplest of shared moments - in a hurried walk through unforgiving weather, in rambling thoughts and girlish dreams, in sitting in a kitchen making dinner - this girl sees something in this boy that maybe no one else sees quite the same way, something that maybe he doesn't even know about himself. We all want to feel desired and wanted, and he is, but secretly, and he'll probably never know, because she seems like the kind of girl who keeps her feelings to herself, especially when she's so convinced they can't be reciprocated. So this is a peek into a secret only she knows.. and we feel honoured, but saddened, to know it too.

The only thing I don't get is the title. I don't really see what "countdown" has to do with this poem?

Great job as always, Beti. You're my hero :D Keep writing!

i really like this.