juvenilia

Kitchen appliances hum softly,

logs shift in the stove, an uneasy chorus.

The shower sings too, softly, faintly.

I wish you and I were tangled together

in this inky night.

All of the others would cease to exist,

even the body dancing under the cascade of water,

the body which may or may not have been invited in.

The fire flares up, burns with an indescribable vibrancy.

I can almost see your face close to mine,

lit up by the flickering of the flames,

a shadowdance with all the intricate details of you.

Liplocked, bedlocked, lovelocked.

I have never wanted anything so much

as I want this profound happiness with you.

Even here, alone in this dingy room, I feel it,

the shapes it creates in the staleness of the air,

the near-tangible texture that it holds.

me & the bard

the bard's words don't move me

because he is beyond this world, this world

to which i belong.

"translate this! and that!"

no thank you, i refuse to shout from rafters, only

to have them correct me time and time again.

we pick apart ideas, searching for truths

beneath what appear to be lies and a great loss of

something that may or may not resemble integrity.

the bard wanted love in every sense of the word

but he never quite grasped all of it at once, even when

his name fell from tongues in shining globs of wonder.

i quote thee, "to be or not to be,"

and this is what i would ask of you in a midsummer night's dream:

with so much and so little at stake, how am i to decide?

i need more time

i am young, or so they tell me

young and able, wild and free

my bones do not creak in the wind.

i am foolish, that's what they say

foolish to believe your broken words

but you were young once too.

i am alone and they never fail to notice

alone, yes, but never too lonely

the cup was half-full when we met.

i am what i tell myself

joyful today, envious tomorrow

and in this moment, just a girl caught in-between.

bonne chance

who am i to feel such sorrow,

when others have gone a lifetime

without knowing these joys that i have known?

who am i to feel this remorse,

when you are encompassed in endless song

and your future becomes the present

that you forever dreamed it would?

who am i to want your love

when it is given freely to all others

and i am the exception, only because

i have already known the splendors?

it is i who fell at your feet and wept

for the beauty we once created,

and it is i who now must smile

at the person i shall watch you become.

for translation

we lived in a city where roses were cheap;

they were humiliated, their thorns stripped away,

and yet you placed them at my feet.

"silence," you told me, "is not a promise."

i did not understand; now, i think that i might.

the air is too thick for the lungs to capture.

we need the noise to distract ourselves.

what have i become?

you'd think by now i would have learned

that love is not a carousel

that love does not spin infinitely

and love does not mean well.

over and over and over, i thought

but look how wrong i was.

you'd think by now i would have learned

that words don't tie us up tight

we are not bound to what we say

and it's not always worth the fight.

bleed and break, do it all again

but look how wrong i was.

just to take up space

"one cannot make that assumption"

but i chose to do it just the same.

it was the first time, what did you really expect?

i've got one moving away and one

right up close.

so do you think you could cut me some slack?

"i should have been more explicit"

and you're only realizing this now?

if he would speak up, at least try

i could forget these ambiguities.

you are the lesser of two (and a half) evils.