Cherished

Proposing to my fiancée
Louise Wright (more on her to come)
was one of those decisions made. 
Our union was quite unexpected,
but that is how it often goes.
She transferred to my high school at 
the start of the eleventh grade,
but we were still just strangers then.
She was a charming Parisienne — 
the one across the great Atlantic, 
not the one a township over — 
who was living with Catherine Shanks, 
the prim and proper scion of 
a local wealthy family. 
There were but two sure things I knew
about this new face at our school:
she played the piano and often performed
with our school’s student orchestra,
and she was the bosom friend of someone 
I once wanted nothing to do with. 
Whenever I saw them chatting and laughing  
in rapid French all by themselves, 
it only confirmed to me that she 
was in a different world from mine.
And so, though I was well aware
that this Louise was someone special,
we never chatted one on one.