Mark Maxey's poem looks back on a high school crush, told in the plain, slightly awkward voice of a teenager. The speaker is distracted by the girl across the aisle, tongue-tied in the hallway, and nervous enough to feel knots in his stomach. He reads her small nods and grins as signs she likes him, and he finally works up the nerve to ask her out for pizza.
She says no, but with a hesitation. Only then does the poem turn: her little brother is dying of cancer, and she is home taking care of him. The speaker realizes she was never ignoring him; she simply had too much on her mind. Her family moves away after the funeral, and he never learns what became of her.
The mood shifts from nervous and playful to quiet and regretful. By the end, the speaker still remembers the first day he saw her in that chair, and the closing lines suggest that the memory, and a little guilt over his "silly games," has stayed with him.