In two parts, titled “A Girl’s Tears, Her Songs” and “A Boy’s Body, His Words,” Gary Soto explores the intense and often fleeting experience of young love. His seventy-seven poems speak in a range of distinct teenage voices along the spectrum of love: longing from a distance (“Don’t You See”), total immersion in a shared romance (“Time”), and the sharp pain of its demise (“Eternal Love”). The elusive nature of love is explored in several of the poems, including “Rough Hands”: “Lotion is a slippery essence / Applied on a winter day / When an icy wind sings through the bare trees. / But I prefer my hands rough. / This way when I hold yours, / You won’t slip away.” (Age 13 and older)