Devonne Brown

Journey really knew how to sing a love song, Steve Perry’s voice was sweet, sexy, and oh so powerful. He sang only to me. “So now I come to you with Broken Arms, believe what I say.” 

To have a man with a voice of silk begging me, proclaiming to me that his love surpassed pain sent me reeling. The to have and to hold thing went deeper because he wanted me, wanted to hold me, but his broken arms prevented him from the touch we both so desperately wanted.

He would only let me, and me alone sign both casts, bent at the elbows. At least I was able to touch his dirty blue black fingers peeking out from the once white plaster that knitted his bones back together. He tried to stroke my face and hair, but the casts prevented him from raising his arms that high. It was so pitiful, painful, and frustrating for both of us. 

He dedicated a song to me at a concert one fateful night. “Just a small town girl, living in a small town world,” I thought I was merely a groupie, but he saw through the facade and jumped off the stage to be near me. It was love at first sight, but he misjudged the distance between him and me, and caught himself with his arms, thus the breakage. He grabbed my hand, and screamed in pain, but wouldn’t let go, even when the medics rushed to him. The song was born.

“Now I come to you with Broken Arms, believe what I say,” he’d sing from the stage. While he was touring, I played the record, loud, over and over and over again, singing with him at the top of my lungs until I heard, “Open arms, not Broken Arms.”

Where’s the fun in that?