I can hear snippets of Regina Spektor, Florence + the Machine, Ani DiFranco, and Lorde in these words. I’m a little embarrassed at it being that transparent, but musing is an inherently incremental activity. I’m working on it.
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Archetype
Your war-torn sneakers which I didn’t ask
to grace my porch tremble from the memory
of us y te juro que no me entendiste because
in your eyes lies a question you wouldn’t be
asking if you’d heard me the first time.
Rain drips from your hair tips to the tulips
and the days stretch longer and the plants
reach taller while you stand there waiting for
god knows what and I stretch forward while you
flit sideways to a rhythm only you can keep so
I wrap my shawl tighter and check the deadbolt
porque no hay nada mas que decir and as this
endless twilight blinks out / your back at long
last turns and the music swells and my smile
spreads and oh / the chorus what a wonderful
welcome from myself to the rest of my life!
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And I have grown
so soon someday will come
(and I won’t warn you when)
when I won’t warn you
‘cause you are flying through
running aground
.
and of course I am
no one to pretend I am not
because god knows where I’m
going these days and oh! I am
all kinds of stuck
.
even though the glue holding
me is stickier it is younger
(than the vines that bind you)
and I am faster (than you realize)
.
while you pretend there is still light in your eyes
I find embers in the in-between
.
so I look beyond this time and
past this place because
although I don’t know
what’s to come I know it
doesn’t include here
.
I am no one to weigh anchor
on what doesn’t cause you strife
but I am everyone to leave behind what
reminds me of your stolen time
and this wayward life
.
in your absence I am the parasite to your destiny
I never realized you would have become of mine
.
in my solitude I aspire:
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Remix
High thoughts in a high place for people who aren’t high
mean it was high time I left. It was never enough
time—and yet now you’ve left. Alpenglow into
silence where the lilacs loom large (don’t bloom).
Take a gander where that got us.
A siren, a symphony: scintillating,
sanguine, and snarling into silence.
I laugh when I think of you.
With your memories tied on my tongue
and your wishes washing wistfully across me
I peer through a window into a world that never was.
I wish for you. I wish you weren’t. I wait.
Whistling wind lofts me upon this lonely summit.
Alpenglow into solitude and with the fading light I feel you:
realer than you ever were, sadder than I ever was.
Alpenglow into missing you. Alpenglow into twilight.
I hate you, or I’d’ve moved on. Yet I’m here
because you will mean the world to me and
I don’t yet realize how. The stars trace their trails
above my head and I see your soul clinging to each one,
reaching across the light-years to my retinas and heartstrings.
Alpenglow into astronomical twilight because I can’t feel you anymore.
I never saw you. Alpenglow into a figment of my imagination.
So fuck these tears and let them grow on elsewhere, even if you never will.
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