Sunday, February 13, 2011

Words for Valentine



These days, I  note every change in your face-
a tick, a tired gesture, a slumping into the chair-
time is signing the last chapter right in front of us.
Your body has become your father's  
your childhood
spent long ago, and again with our children
and their worries.

I could never tell you how   
the past becomes the future
right in your face
because,in
each other's eyes
time stopped when we met at twenty four.
Today, I'm afraid to shatter
all that we salvaged,
each trauma
written in our grey hair and in
our acking backs.

It isn't easy to smile this time of the year,
words expected to fall at our feet like blooming roses.
It isn't roses or jewels I crave.
I crave the never-ending story.









5 comments:

  1. What beautiful writing here. I love the part of how your body has become your father's...

    To me, this poem is such a beautiful testament to the long term love, love that's not always easy.

    I am taking this poem to hear today, Valentine's Day.

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  2. fluid. i think of our today cells becoming renewed, becoming tomorrow's cells, and while they are new, there is this continuity between you two, the knowing of one another since 24.

    i ache somewhere inside of me for not having that never ending story, but it is but a construct, rosaria, a false one, and both you and i know it, and yet we cleave to it in our yearning souls.

    as i read you, i know you, without distance or bullshit. it's wonderful.

    xo
    erin

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  3. Valentine is worst than Christmas in laying down enormous expectations. The bullshit is there, in every card we give each other, every box of chocolate.

    Only love between mother and child is indelible. Everything else can be washed away by a simple dip in the river of life.

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  4. p.s. not that it has to be washed away. Keeping that promise to keep that fire alive is very hard. If it were easy, we wouldn't be talking about it.

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  5. the simplicity of the truth resounds in my soul when reading this.

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