Joe and the Hurricane

At seven you were the most adorable boy in class
And the teachers loved to pinch your cheek.

At twelve, while you were still learning the ropes,
They came in and tied you down with those very ropes
You haven’t been the same since.

At eighteen you wrote a 4000-word novella entitled Joe and the Hurricane,
Which you thought was very cool — and
Secretly, you still think it is.

At twenty-four, you met me:
The settled dust storm, the closet wild-child, would-be girl of your dreams
(Not that you ever confessed)
And tried to read me, not knowing I was reading you
And I devoured each page, all the while.
You tried to fall in love
But ended up on your feet instead, away from the ground
Where they tied you at twelve
And then the night wasn’t as dark
And I was a blurred shape in the background,
As you embarked on your journey to be something.

At twenty-seven,
You saw me at your favourite coffee shop
With a ruddy-cheeked toddler in a stroller
And you felt a pang of wistfulness you couldn’t understand.
You walked over and asked if I remembered you —
The pen pal from the long-gone past —
I mocked a double take and gasped.
You laughed your short, loud laughter
And licked your chapped lips nervously to say,
“That’s a beautiful girl you have there.”
I thanked you genuinely and handed you a coffee,
Informing you I had a beautiful sister-in-law,
Which made you grin like an adolescent and ask,
“Is there any chance she’s divorced?”

Your bad jokes made me laugh at twenty-four
The same as they did at twenty-one.

I was posted at Sicily
While you backpacked halfway across the world
“Cosa Nostra,” you remarked — tongue in cheek
A rad two-word compliment none other could understand.

When you were twenty-nine,
I saw you outside the Teatro Massimo and yelled your name.
I was embarrassed that you’d seen me with a notebook
And the same old habit — of being a compulsive writer.
Upon much insistence, I told you I was writing
A song about a bird with a broken wing.
Your relentless sense of humour
Had me doubled over and I dropped my pen
And have not found it to-date
Which is why the rest of the story hasn’t been inked
But I can tell you this:
It isn’t bad — at all.