Confessions & Recollections V: The Poem

Jess St. Cloud was frantic. Don hadn’t answered his phone or responded to texts the entire weekend following ReVival 55. She could tell, even through the broadcast, that his argument with Hessian struck something deeper within him. In the midst of her panic, she began cleaning, anything to try and ease her mind. Don had been extremely communicative up until the last three or four weeks, which wasn’t unusual, but it felt different this time. As she worked her way through boxes of old newspaper articles and magazine features she had penned herself, a crumbling, jaundiced loose piece of paper fell out. As she picked it up her eyes went wide and she backed herself into a chair. As she sat, her mouth dropped open with shock, her hands trembled as she mouthed the words one by one. I first met you on the boardwalk at sunset In a yellow sundress, flowers in your hair And I was too tongue-tied for clever lines To have even asked your name Something about the water Something about the sand Something about asking If you’d hold my hand

It was along the water under soft moonlight You were twirling in the sand by the bonfire Your eyes burning red, you moved in ways I wouldn’t forget for days Feels like a waking dream What was the rumination That I’ve got to keep asking Are you just my imagination?

We saw the sun rise at the rim of the world And I still couldn’t be sure that this was real The touch of your lips and the very first kiss Your eyes pulling me into an abyss Before I knew it you were gone Dipping beneath the red horizon Sailed away on an ocean wave My heart strings left undone She was transported back to 2004, the weekend she met Don in Boston. The last day they had spent together, he handed her this folded up piece of legal paper, kissed her on the forehead and disappeared for two decades, some sort of specter that she had never really been sure of its authenticity. In that moment, her mind started racing. Where had he been all those years? Public figures, even those as sometimes fringe as professional wrestlers don’t just disappear. She had mostly put her investigative work behind her, but when the wheel started to turn she found it impossible to shut off. She put the poem out on the table and smoothed the paper out, resolving to show it to Don the next time she saw him. She grabbed her bag, making sure her laptop was in there with an extra battery. She couldn’t help but think how little she actually knew about Don. He was a wrestler. He led a church. He was the father of Jeremiah. However, he never spoke about his childhood and he only vaguely referenced the twenty year spell between their meetings. She started reaching out to him back in December after the Colossus loss to Daytona Diamonds because she thought she recognized him. The long black hair was gone, he was bigger, healthier looking, but she knew it was the same Donovan Winters from her past. But what about his?

She felt a rush she hadn't felt in a long time. The chance to dig into something.