Mark Maxey's "Red Haired Dream" is a look back at a high school crush that never went anywhere. The speaker remembers a girl with red hair and freckles, first met in the gym, and he hopes her eyes might help his heart "mend," which hints that he was hurting in some way, though the poem never says why. He is too shy to ask her out, so he daydreams and prays instead, while she seems to move through school too quickly for him to catch up.
Football becomes a kind of bargain: if the team wins on Friday night, maybe he'll finally find the nerve. By graduation, she sits just two rows ahead of him, close enough to speak to, yet nothing happens. The speaker admits it all came down to his own infatuation.
The mood is wistful and a little rueful. The repeated chorus, ending with "one question away," makes the regret feel like a thought he keeps circling back to.