um...

[kalichan]

I was meant to be dissertating. If not that, then I was meant to be writing the novel. If not that, then sleeping. Or at least writing fic. Instead, I, um, sort of wrote a sort of sonnet. (Very sort of. It's got rhyme but the meter is... let's call it eccentric, and leave it at that, shall we?)

fairies, or: I [did not] make you up inside my head

I shall not meet them by the sea,
nor in the grove, they are there no longer--
dead, they are dead, they are ships that have foundered,
those beautiful ladies sans Merci.
I talk as if they once were mine,
but I confess! I confess! I have never truly known
the cup, and the sword, and that tower of stone.
I spoke as if they bore me hence, but when I did: I lied.
wishing, you see, did not make it so
for no wardrobe opened, no blue door.
I know no beasts that speak so clear and lively;
I met no dryads crowned with starlit ivy.
you ought to know I never left; I was me all along...
and I could never really sing a mad girl's love song.

--

I haven't written a poem in years and I can see that it shows. I used to be better at it, if alarmingly navel-gazing and lovelorn (bad combination!). Still, there was nothing for it: this was there in my head, and had to come out. I suppose it's from reading Among Others and re-reading Lord of the Rings. There's nothing like knowing there's a map to fairyland, but you can't follow it, that there's magic, and mayhem, and yes, madness in the world, but somehow not for you.

Acknowledgments: this poem stands crouches on the shoulders of Sylvia Plath and John Keats.