Friday The 13th In Gay Paree Poem by Alexandre Nodopaka

or How Close I Came to Could've Been There

It so happens I befriended a woman
for many circumstantial reasons.
For one, of all the random chances

in the world, she became the girl-friend
of my close male friend of some
then 25 years in California.

They visited us here on numerous
occasions where we discovered
we both were from Casablanca and spent

much of our lives literally blocks apart
separated by 15 years of anniversaries.
We spoke French as fluently as native-born

except that her ancestry predated mine
in that country by centuries.
During the past decade and a half long

friendship we communicate and visit
respectively in California and France.
Her daughter married a Parisian who works

at the Bataclan Café when suddenly
ratata-tat tat-tat the bay windows crash
in torrential sheets.