EXPLANATION

A few months into my freshman year of high school, I developed a crush on a junior, who was actually my best friend's older brother. I had met him before I met her, and it was completely by coincidence that they were related. I had a little joke with him where whenever I saw him in school I would go up to him and hug him, no matter who he was with. Although that's not established in the poem, but I guess the instance where I staggered on my own two feet can be an embarrassment when I hug him because one time I did actually tumble a bit. This was originally a poem written for my English class, and I recall my English teacher praising me for the "Your smile shown elsewhere, just a past memory". I was pretty proud of it too. The first draft was what was submitted for class, and as I revisited the poem I decided to revamp it, which resulted in the final draft. In the first draft, I wanted to write a poem about a girl who innocently had a crush on a guy whom she had been friends with for an extended period of time and only recently began realizing her feelings for him. As she began to realize, something changed, which resulted in him distancing himself from her, most likely either from him developing feelings for another girl, or (in my perspective) I found out he wanted to start vaping and tried to talk him out of it so he stopped talking to me. At the end of the poem, the girl suddenly gathers up the courage to confess her feelings to him before it's too late, which I assume was unsuccessful as he had already drifted too far away from her grasp. But that's all made up for the poem and not relevant to my own perspective. The second draft was really just rewriting some text, the purpose is pretty similar, except I wanted to not have her decide to confess, and just accept it as it is. In the final draft, I wanted the poem to better go in depth about the realization of her love for him, which is why it's changed from you to him until the last two paragraphs of the poem. She is describing him like she has feelings but hasn't yet realized her true(!) feelings for this guy, which is why in the end it changes to you, as she had finally come to the realization, but it was already too late. The title of this poem used to be just "True Feelings" up until the final draft, where I decided to add "(My)" - it's in parenthesis to enhance the understanding that the true feelings that come to light are the girls', kind of like how it goes from him to you, it adds to the realization. I even added the pink and blue hearts on the page to represent the two, with the hearts at the top being full and the hearts at the bottom being empty inside. Because why not.

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SONG CHOICE

I chose Blame It On The Rain by He Is We as the poem's song representation for a few reasons, one being that this was one of my favorite songs at the time and that the summary of the song is very similar to the poem. For example, the lyric "My pain is knowing I can't have you" connects with my poem in regards to how the girl realizes she can't be with the guy even after realizing her feelings for him because it was too late. "My heart, it breaks at the thought of her holding you" could also fit into a similarity if you take into consideration that the two drifted apart due to the girl liking another guy, which is one of the possibilities. "Does she get the same big rush when you go in for a hug and your cheeks brush?" is also very similar to my whole thing where the girl gets flustered over him doing a completely normal thing. Honestly, I randomly stumbled upon this song on my phebe 101 playlist on Spotify and realized it's a super good song for this poem. I knew this song would be an acoustic if it ever were to be transferred to song lyrics, so it fits perfectly.