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.