now twice have i felt the stinging of your teenage love:

now twice have i felt the stinging of your teenage love:

those times when you told me that no one knew any better
i was unknowing of everything, i was sitting alone on a too-big bed
waiting for someone to sneak through my basement window
and make some form of mishap with me

when you told me that you had to make choices i had already chosen
not to force myself to make choices, i had already told myself
that myself was for myself and not for others, not for the old
and especially not for the new

then when you said how you had to find things out i knew
what i had been told by my mother and father - i had seen
my sisters (who were told nothing) find things out as you did:
unknowingly, unwillingly

how you somehow dealt with a death not a death but a ceasing -
as much as my mother would hate such ceasing
i have to think that at least one of her rosary beads would know
that god would want me to live

most of all you tell me about leaving - it's all about the leaving
and i thought not about leaving but about grasping when i was young,
i thought of grasping someone with whom i could leave
and move on, move up, move forward

but somehow after hearing the sting of your teenage love
i wish to move on
up
forward
with you and your sting