Two Hand Touch

This piece is from the 450 workshop I mentioned yesterday, because all the slam stuff has left me horribly behind on work in almost all of my classes. I'm spending the rest of the afternoon hard at work, writing a paper between reading 2 novels and 2 plays. Still, I edited this earlier out of a freewrite on the prompt "someone that sat with you in class". It's not quite the same as what I've been writing recently, but I kinda like it, so here goes:

Two Hand Touch

It was the second half of the eighth grade,
it was Field Day, and the graduating class
of Cavallaro Junior High was pretending
to know how to play football;
two hand touch.
We all wore light white shirts
and heavy black pants, so
your forearms were freezing, while
sweat pooled around your ankles.
We were celebrating spring, and
when I took a seat in the stands, she
surprised me with a sentence,
puzzled me with a proposition:
"Will you go to prom with me?"

Dorene had spent the better part of
six months of Spanish class forming
an intimate acquaintance with the
back of my neck, listening to
Sra. Torres's endless lectures of
"Stop reading in class, Brendan"
"Stop eating in class, Brendan"
"Pay attention, please, Brendan"
I was overweight, with square glasses
and a mushroom cut (visited on me by
some malicious barber). Back then,
I didn't know the term puppy love, but
I heard the barking in my ears over
an orchestra of astonishment. When I
managed to speak, all i could say was:
"Are you sure?"

I didn't dance with anyone else that June
(if you can call it dancing).
I brought her a corsage, and she
wasn't too embarrassed to hold my hand.
We went for walks along the Atlantic, and
I whispered every romantic phrase from
every movie in the last two decades.
It lasted two months,
but I thought it was a miracle,
the first slice of chocolate cake
fresh from the oven.