Minor elegy

[miir]

Of all things, I regret these:
tears that drew you to my side,
the smile you gave me in exchange for words,
my fingers mapping your body, the lone hand
reaching for the sky. Would that
I were too strong for weeping,
and you too weak to touch tears.

(You were my shelter; you
kept me safe
from nonexistent storms.)

Lifetimes later I smile at sorrow
and keep scarred hands to my chest. The sky
is too far to touch now, though it canopied
all those nights my body lay beside
yours, weakness to weakness,
strength to strength. All that remains
are empty words my fingers
trace around and under.

(Never through.)

You are becoming a ghost,
existing only
in the scars crossing my skin
and the key to the chest
of your secrets I once kept.
I swallowed it one night
under the rain.

The taste lingers still:
metallic, sharp, bitter.

July 11, 2006

-

Another twenty-minute poem I had to get out of my system. It is among the worse ones I’ve written, but eh, I’m not a poet and I really couldn’t think properly - there weren’t any motifs to cling to, or good images, since I’d erased most of my memories of what happened in an effort to save what was left of my heart.

Some figurative language, some terrible cliches (I plead uh poetic license), a lot of echoed themes/motifs (well repetition = quick easy dirty way to do contrast! and progression! and all that stuff!) all intentional line-breaks (phrasing to convey a sense of hesitation and tragedy, wow Mia, such brilliance!), some truth.

Posted from ephemere.