The Haunting

The music about love, of which I was enamored
As a dreaming teen
Still haunts me
Into my fourth decade of life
The melodies
The choruses
Bring me back to pimply skin
And awkward moves
Counting the facial hair as it emerged
Energizing me as I felt accepted
Annoying me as I felt rejected.

The same tingling
That grasped a heart longing to love
But not knowing what love really was
Beckons me
In the quiet suburban night
As I understand love a little more
But understand even less
The mystery of why love
Is so haunting
Across a lifetime
And why a boy and a man
Are never truly more than one
Together, a drafty old house with fresh paint
Ever hospitable to the ghosts
Of love past, present and imagined.