Poetic Payoff, Nine Years Later

Lauren and I were sitting at the same table using laptop computers the day she joined Twitter. Because I had given her a hard time about my having "out-teched" her when I joined Twitter, she had taken great pride in choosing her user name, closettweeter, and she patiently waited—for about an hour—for me to notice her new web presence. Alas, I was busy writing and did not discover her cleverness on my own, forcing her to ask me a question about Twitter so I could be amused with her new identity.

Considering that Lauren could wait no more than an hour to see the results of her actions, I had to marvel at what I discovered yesterday:

Using a style similar to mine, Lauren wrote this nine years ago in a poetry journal I started when I was 12. It took me a couple minutes to decipher the last word (bundles), partly because the handwriting belonged to a 10-year-old and partly because my eyes had sprung leaks. And, since I have moved the book a number of times over the past nine years, and have cracked it open more than once, I am completely amazed that I never noticed the poem until yesterday.

So there you have it, Poots. I finally found what you did, you clever, clever girl.