I saw you today.
Which is funny, because I’m in Istanbul
and we haven’t spoken in years.
You were fourteen and I was eating soup for lunch.
It’s not how I expected we would meet.
I wasn’t expecting you to be so young, either;
older would have made sense.
Older I would have been prepared for.
Older would have allowed me to call upon my anger,
which lurks like sewage or bile
somewhere in the vicinity of my liver.
But you were fourteen,
coming down the street,
all lean and lanky, with your gawky glasses
and your long limbs.
You looked just like I remember from the photos
you showed me once in your bedroom,
the photos we laughed at together:
uncomfortable in your own pubescent body,
miserable and lonely and afraid.
Your chin was tucked down, almost to your small chest,
which you are self-conscious about
(you wonder if it will ever grow).
Maybe it’s because you were so young,
but what washed over me was not anger
but a tenderness that was like a warmth,
like cider on an clear October night in the Middle West.
I wanted to walk after you. I wanted to hug you
and tell you that you’ll grow out of this.
That your soul, or your idea of your soul,
will catch up to your sinewy limbs,
your extravagant neck. That you will grow into yourself.
That you’ll laugh more.
That some man is going to fall deeply,
irrevocably in love with you.
I’d leave out the part where you break his heart,
because watching your sullen walk
as you disappeared into the shimmering summer heat
all I felt, all my heart could muster,
was love.