Most of Being Almost Twelve

It wasn’t like he wasn’t trying to be cool.
He thought back to the playground after school.
He’d dressed so very carefully for that.
He wore his favorite baseball hat –

it’s true, he wished he had the knack
for looking good in it, reversing front to back
or angling the brim so that it stuck out on the side.
But he looked like a platypussy every time he tried.

Platypussy’s what they called him when they saw his shoes.
He’d thought they were so retro! They thought they were bad news.
And they were hardly sports
deriding his bright yellow shorts.

As he casually struck a blasé stance,
they said it looked like he had peed his pants.
And then there was that bully Tommy Kelly
who pointed at his skinny arms and flabby belly

and itemized his other features with a nasty grin.
It wasn’t his fault that he had no chin.
Or that he had a great big nose.
Nobody had noticed that his chapeau matched his hose.

All they said was that he smelled like platypussy piss.
Most of being almost twelve occurs in the abyss.

.