One to Another Calling Each in their Proper Speech

Prologue

The three scariest words for a teenager to utter are: "I like you." Take a teenager for whom English is a second language, who has only a few years' experience navigating its myriad idiomatic minefields (pro tip: use "rooster" to refer to a chicken who does not lay eggs, especially when telling the story of being chased by an angry one when visiting grandfather in the village) and the problem is redoubled. Let us, therefore, dispose with names, lest the guilty be embarrassed. Let us speak only of Boy and Girl, who liked each other. 

And poetry.

Golden-winged, silver-winged
Winged with flashing flame,
Such a flight of birds I saw,
Birds without a name:
Singing songs in their own tongue—
Song of songs—they came.

One to another calling,
Each answering each,
One to another calling
In their proper speech:
High above my head they wheeled,
Far out of reach.

Girl recited this poem in class one day, "Birds of Paradise" by Christina Rossetti. Boy thought the poem might have been meant for him: "golden-winged" for his reddish flyaway hair, "in their own tongue" for the obvious language barrier, and, most discouraging, "far out of reach." He thought to reach her with poetry. He first tried to translate Pushkin:

Storm in darkness sky is covering,

Tornadoes of snow spinning,

at times like a beast it will howl,

at times weep like a baby.

which didn't sound nearly as romantic as what he had in mind. Then he tried to write a poem of his own:

I'm no poet, it's a fact,

I can't describe how well you're stacked.

This he scratched out, too, for much the same reason.

Having exhausted all other possibilities, he resolved, at the next opportunity, to ask her for a date. The opportunity soon presented itself as he spied her, alone, waiting at a bus stop on the corner of DeKalb and Flatbush avenues.

He was within ten feet of her, his mouth already opening and contorting into what he hoped looked like a smile, when a man ran past her, grabbing her purse and wrenching it away. Boy barely  had time for visions of the next few seconds -- him pursuing the robber, tackling him, being kicked and beaten, the girl shedding tears at his bedside -- when the girl made a small, awkward-looking move, the robber magically changed the direction of his motion, his trajectory intersected with the plate glass of the bus stop shelter, and as he watched her retrieve her slightly blood-spattered purse from a fricassee of broken glass and stunned robber, it occurred to him that this wasn't the best time to ask her if she wanted to go for ice cream.

Graduation came and went without them ever talking to each other. She went to college; he took a merchant marine job aboard a freighter.