My dearest
I am not sure what I can say.
There is nothing recognizably profound about my love for you.
In fact, it might best be described by the dictionary’s definition
or worse
a Hollywood romantic comedy.
If I were the heroine of some beautiful legend
surely you would be the one I forsake.
I would leave you to a happy life with some girl who is nice
pretty
smart
completely likeable
and utterly forgettable.
And so
I am she
and you too…
my love, you too are but a pitiful pawn in this bitch’s glory.
And yet
well…
There is a certain freedom in being the story no one will remember
in being the volume no one will think to save from the burning archives…
No one will notice when we tear a hole in the universe
and slip through it. ᵠ
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What? ᵠ
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Were you expecting me to tell you what happens on the other side? ᵠ
There is a certain freedom in being the story no one will remember
in being the volume no one will think to save from the burning archives…
No one will notice when we tear a hole in the universe
and slip through it. ᵠ
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What? ᵠ
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Were you expecting me to tell you what happens on the other side? ᵠ
There is a certain freedom in being the story no one will remember
in being the volume no one will think to save from the burning archives…
No one will notice when we tear a hole in the universe
and slip through it. ᵠ
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ᵠ What?
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Were you expecting me to tell you what happens on the other side? ᵠ
New Year’s Eve: 2015…almost 2016. I was just finishing up my engineering degree, finally settling into my decision to walk away from The Faith, still flailing about rather gracelessly in my new life outside all the rules of the church. I’d yet to fall in love, yet to know a number of different kinds of heart-break, yet to…many things. I’m not sure you could say my childhood naïveté was still completely intact, but until you’ve seen it all you are always naïve to something, and for all its flaws and foibles, naïveté does sometimes carry with it a special sort of clarity.
I wrote this poem, thinking of a close friend of mine. I loved him. Deeply. In the way I love all my most cherished friends: uniquely and profoundly. And yes, he was rather handsome, so I did toy with the idea of kissing him from time to time. I must also confess that I bandied the word ‘love’ about rather carelessly in my own private writings—though I don’t think I can really be held accountable for the failure of the English language to come up with more than one word for the many different sorts of love.
In any event, I noticed that when I imagined crossing from the realm of friendship into that of something more with him, instead of finding new depths to explore, things seemed only to grow shallower and shallower…shimmering less and less.
At the time, I hadn’t fully wrestled with the many what-ifs of love: Would I settle for a forever-lover for whom I felt anything less than the way I do gazing at a starry sky on a moonless night; the way I feel standing alone surrounded by fresh, untouched snow; the way I feel watching orange leaves swirl violently in front of an blackening, autumn storm-cloud? Would the comfort of company in old age be worth the inevitable sacrifices one makes in committing to a mate?
At 23, I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I secretly suspected I would never marry—hopeless romantic though I am in more ways than one—and I was too busy finishing my degree and dreaming of ways to change the world…or ways to fade suddenly into reckless anonymity (both futures sounded equally dreamy to me at the time) to worry too deeply about such matters. In fact, I don’t think this poem has much to do with any of the questions pertaining to love that I would eventually grapple with—and yes, I’m sure that to a large degree my intuitions of shallowness were an indication that my romantic sentiments toward this friend were rather superficial and fleeting, but in this poem, I think I was toying with the much less concrete idea that despite any plainness they might outwardly project, all good and simple things hold a sacred, hidden depth. There is a very human magic to spotting hidden caverns where one has already reached an apparently impenetrable bottom, and perhaps I was just arrogant enough to fancy myself some such Seer.