Page 62 of Texting My Valentine

“Do you want some help with your homework?” I ask.

His eyes widen. “Would you, really?”

“Sure. I’m a poet myself. My most recent poem was about love… sort of.”

“How can it besort ofabout love, Tori?”

I look at his sonnet. “So, with Shakespeare, his sonnets were often quite clear in their messaging. He knew he was in love with his subject. He didn’t hold back. He enthusiastically and proudly painted his love with words.”

“Wait, hold up,” Elliot says, scrawling on his notebook,Enthusiastically and proudly painted his love with words…

I laugh. “Isn’t that called copying, young man?”

“Nuh-uh. It’s calledinspiration.”

That gets another laugh out of me. This kid is precocious and hilarious.

“But that’s not what my poem was like. Mine was more about if love is a good idea.”

“Why would it be a bad idea?” he asks.

“Sometimes, love can lead down bad paths.”

He suddenly looks older, more serious. “Like with Mom and Dad?”

“I… uh, I don’t know.”

I don’t want to say the wrong thing.

“It’s okay, Tori. I know what happened. Dad was Uncle Alex’s brother. And Mom was Uncle Alex’s girlfriend. Mom and Dad weren’t supposed to be together, but then they had me.”

“What was that like?” I murmur.

“Huh?”

“Growing up knowing your uncle and your mom…”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Weird? It was like, Uncle Alex would come by and everybody would be really happy, like too happy, and make a big deal out of it. And Uncle Alex would have a big smile and be super happy, too, but I always thought there was a sad person behind his happy face. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” I tell him.

And I know the feeling.

“Anyway,” I go on, “let’s go through the poem line by line. I can teach you a little about close reading.”

He moves his face inches from the paper. “Like this?”

I chuckle. “Close reading means dissecting a text line by line, word by word, looking for the techniques the writer used to present the message.”

“Dissecting, sort of like a surgeon, like Uncle Alex?”

“Yes, but with words.”

“Whoa, that’s actually pretty cool. Maybe English isn’t so bad after all.”

“Let me make some coffee, and we’ll get cracking. Does that sound good?”

Elliot grins. “Sounds cracking.”

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