Jackie Tyler's Sestina

Suppose she always was a funny one,
When she was little, always running round.
Button-cute she was, could get away
With murder -- I remember, people said,
You should be careful, Jax, you wanna watch her,
And I'd say, "Yeah? I'd like to see you try it,

For half an hour, and see how much you like it!"
And now I look at her -- she's twenty-one,
And trouble, even now, just seems to find her,
Like a bad smell, always hanging round
I've never asked and, course, she's never said,
But I wonder if she likes her life that way,

Doesn't want to make the bad things go away;
They make the world exciting and she likes it.
Oh, listen to me talk -- 'the world', I said,
As if that's all there is, and only one:
This universe, this planet, small, blue, round...
I s'pose that's how we all thought, till he found her.

I say he found her, well I s'pose he saved her.
Then she saved him and he took her away.
Can't see the fun in all that chasing round
Myself -- can't see why anyone would want it.
Whenever she came home I thought I'd won.
"It's not a competition, Mum!" she said.

"Oh, life's a competition, Rose," I said.
I had this sudden, awful urge to slap her.
'Cos life's a war, a battle to be won,
Or lost and have it all just ripped away...
And, bless her cotton socks, she never got it!
Thought everything was laughs and messing round.

Well, now she's fallen off that merry-go-round.
He won't be back -- at least that's what he said,
And this time, yeah -- he really seemed to mean it.
She cried for days, Oh Lord, you should have seen her!
I thought it meant she wouldn't go away.
I thought she'd stay. I thought, "This time, I've won."

I watched her laughing with her friends around her.
She sighed and said, "I'd love to get away."
And it hurts just as much in one world as another.