Scrawled in the yearbook are forever promises of people I've now forgotten. 
Which exact Mary informed me I was "sweet" then drew a flower?
I can't recall the "fun times in Spanish Club" over forty years later. 

Scrawled in the yearbook are forever promises of people I've now forgotten. 
Which football player did I admire from afar? I remember the feeling but not the face. 
Why did I overlook those next to me in theater and debate? 

Scrawled in the yearbook are forever promises of people I've now forgotten.
Afternoons of painting scenery, running laps, learning poems now echo in my memory. 
We shyly interacted then hurried home to essays, multiplication tables, and notecards.

Boisterous and buoyant or timid and tender, we learned about first jobs and first loves.
We idealize those days, yet we remain those growing teens even now.  
Quarterbacks now teach immigrants and refugees; beauty queens have become grandmothers. 
We set stages and memorize roles for work as accountants, custodians, engineers, or counselors. 
Yet some do not continue.

Gunshots, depression, sudden illness, or freak accidents claimed some of us, 
now forever remembered as thirteen to eighteen, young and full of the life we others 
remember and reach back to hold and reclaim and live in spirit. 
Captured in the yearbooks are timeless moments of those whom we can never forget.