Never Was
Joelle Sonet
I think about that summer a lot. I think about him a lot. I cringe a lot. I was like a baby deer, taking its first wobbly steps out into the big scary world. I crushed on him all summer. I was resistant at first. But he grew on me. I started to like the way he said things; spouting sophisticated ideas in his boyish caveman-lingo. I started to laugh at his jokes, slowly realizing how witty he was. If you were around him long enough, you realized he was actually just kind of depressed; terribly insecure. He worried about his future and wanted so badly to mean something special to a girl. I liked the way he walked. The way his broad shoulders sat atop his narrow waist. Almost monkey-ish. The summer flew by. I made a couple subtle moves, and it happened. My first kiss. On the dock in the middle of the pond. The summer heat turned to a chilly breeze under the dark, star-lit sky. Suddenly, the boy who hadn’t shown much interest was talking in hypotheticals. Dangling the possibility of a relationship over my head. Not fully letting me go. And then he was gone. Back to his fancy Ivy League life. I saw him over winter break. He was different. He was a frat boy now with a city girlfriend. I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t invested enough to be hurt. I still replay everything, though. But it’s different in my mind now. To be honest, I’m not sure I ever had a serious one-on-one conversation with him. I don’t think I did. Did he ever really like me? I’m not sure he did. Maybe it was just convenience; maybe it was practice for his college girlfriend. What if I didn’t even know him? What if I wanted something so bad that I convinced myself he was it? What if I’m replaying memories warped with time and hindsight? Mourning feelings that weren’t real? A boy that never was.
Joelle Sonet is part of the Rutgers class of 2026. She is from Livingston, NJ. She is a Jewish Studies major, although creative writing has always appealed to her. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, clay art, and journaling.
Joelle wrote this poem in a course taught by Paul Blaney, who selected the piece for inclusion in WHR.