They're like kids in the sandbox of a playground,
He's practically pulling on her pigtails,
Except with a constant stream of words,
All her worst flaws flowing off his slips one after another,
It's enough for her to drown in her own tears over,
If she wasn't afraid he'd be right there watching.

Yet behind the bitingly bad remarks,
And that hard set line in his jaw,
There's a golden-haired boy she used to know,
One who always wins his arguments with,
A cocky, lopsided flash of teeth,
That could make her forget her own name.

They're both young though, and so stupid,
So he packs his bags for eternal sunshine and waves,
He forgets the blue-eyed girl he used to know, those lazy summer days,
And as she sits through them this time,
She wonders if he ever existed at all,
Or if he was just the passing whisper in the wind.

She's just shy of her eighteenth birthday,
And he's almost struck his twentieth,
When he dons blue and she wears white,
And walk down the aisle toward their future,
The rows of guests ranging from sorrow to indifference,
The march plays and suddenly high school's over.

He was the quintessential rebel with out a cause,
Complete with biting tongue and smoldering looks,
Now he's a frustrated car salesman aging faster everyday,
She was the intelligent but doe-eyed girl from a small town,
Who decided it was worth the struggle to keep on studying,
But ends up fighting loneliness and depression more than anything.

She watches the snow fall against the streets of Boston,
So different brightly lit pavement being sloshed by cars,
Then it was on the winter-withered trees outside her home,
The low lull of piano is floating through the air behind her,
And just as she intakes sharply in recognition, turning towards it,
It's gone like a whisper in the wind.

He's sixteen and in a room that he remembers later,
As shrouded in a fog of large amounts of alcohol and people,
The girl is blurry to him even in the days that follow afterwards,
He only remembers her as blond, simple, and utterly unfamiliar,
He expects too much and gets crying in return for his fantasies,
To be honest, he would rather forget.

She blooms a little later like always at a solid twenty,
Her match neither as young nor as inexperienced as she is,
She doesn't lead onto her innocence but acts on her instincts,
Only to find herself pressed against a wall by a man who smells of peppermint,
And just as the familiar melody starts to ease her nervous body's shaking,
It stutters and stops because it's already over.

Later on they lie in their beds alone,
Five years apart with the same feelings,
Cold to their own toughs and so very alone,
Worrying that they're even more damaged then before,
He turns on his side and tries to calm his head with sleep,
But all he can hear is the wind wracking his window with a howl.

She's picking a graham cracker crust when it catches her eye,
A familiar man in a blue sweatshirt on Christmas Eve,
He's rubbing his eyes sleepily while looking at cake mix,
She watches him try to choose between Devil's Cake and vanilla,
Finally he reaches his hand over the chocolate and walk away,
And she can't believe she let him leave again.

She nibbles at her pointer as she nears the register,
Ending up just short of the three dollars plus tax,
Suddenly a hand glides by her with the fifteen cents,
She looks up to see him smirking down at her,
And it feels like her lungs stopped pumping air,
Until he makes a comment about her hair.

They linger in the parking lot in the crisp air,
Trying to cram a total of eight years into five minutes,
He checks her out and leers while she swoons hard,
Before they get right to the bickering their good at,
And he kisses her forehead before walking reluctantly away,
She stands there, the wind nipping at her cheeks as she bleeds tears onto them.

Years later it comes to her in a dream,
A red Victorian house that she remembers,
A little boy playing on the swing set outside,
His father watches on and laughs as his wife,
A chestnut brunette, tries to garden.

She wakes up feeling dull and empty,
And seeks out the house near her old pond,
Six hours in the car later she pulls up to it,
And she sees the little boy on the swing set,
The golden-haired man looking on from a distance,
And then another chestnut haired woman.

She realizes she's halted in front of the house,
And speeds of with a screech of tires,
She's quivering too badly to drive and needs to stop,
She finds a touristy area with people feeding ducks,
She parks reluctantly and flies by them shielding her face,
Running until she finds a safe spot at the other side's edge.

As the tears fall against her warm, sticky cheeks,
She hears familiar tones of piano in her head,
He used to play with his fingers drifting back and forth,
So thin and easy as they breezed across the keyboard,
And he smiles at her as he sings the last line,
"But now I'm just a whisper in the wind."