I can still remember August, you know. Back then you were just a boy with a crooked smile, too old for me, but with beautiful hands, and I was the pretty girl who couldn't read music. You sat next to me - out of place, a brass among woodwinds - and together we transcended words.
In January, I was Ophelia and I was Roxanne, I was Desdemona and Juliet. You were gone. I thought I was drowning, and everyone's voices sounded like violins, so I walked to the park just to watch small things die in the snow. It was only when I saw your broken shape walking through the trees that I really knew what it meant not to breathe.
We like to get lost together. In April, it's a church. We're late, locked out of Mass and roaming the hallways laughing. You find a tambourine somewhere and it keeps the time to our dancing, two heathens in a silent house. If we're damned for this, we're damned together.
In September we stood by the water and watched stars falling, and I told you all of the things I wanted to do but couldn't. You said nothing at first, but slowly you began to whisper to me about all the impossible things in the universe. This is our kind of science. We are impossible.
October found us shivering and somehow expectant. You ask me to walk with you. We trace our initials in the dirt where no one but us will ever see them, but something's wrong. When the last bit of autumn sun is being sucked down by the horizon, you confess it all. The heartbreak, the tears of summer, the aching burning whiplashed terror of love, and your secret.
And I drop. In my head, I fall to the ground and the shock comes hot and fast. Saltwater snowflakes, moonlit nights speaking of abstract physics, your hands in my hair and a thousand sunless planets where we could have spent eternity together - gone.
But I keep standing, and I don't say a word. I smile. And I beg you to please tell me you remember. Please tell me that for all of your forgetfulness, all your sweetness and all the years I spent loving you to the point of tears, you will recognize me when we reach the last October.
I will be happy for you. I will tell him how lucky he is to have you and I'll hold your adopted daughter, and I'll tell her about tambourines, and string instruments, and the Virgin Mary and trees that bend under snow.
And I will thank you for giving me Shakespeare, for giving me poetry. Thank you for four years of beauty and brutality, thank you for all the times you made love to me under starlight, even if I only dreamed it.
And seventy years from now when I see someone with perfect hands, and weep because they do not have your eyes, thank you for not being there to witness it.
Author notes
c a s s a n d r a g e m i n i
I know it's long... but there's just so much.
A contest entry
- make the most of all the sadness. by aanika.
6000 points, ended September 27, 12 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
How can I make it better?
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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i noticed that you switched between past and present tense a lot and that can work sometimes, but when you're doing a timeline sort of thing, it can get kind of frustrating.
and together we transcended words.
i really like that, and how you're saying in a poem that sometimes words aren't everything.
thank you for entering.
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this is beautifully written. so much emotion and remembrance. longing, even. thank you for a great entry.
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This is our kind of science. We are impossible.
amazing amazing work. there are so many parts to this that i love. shivering and expectant...wow
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Stunning. Absolutely stunning. Sorry, I cannot say more than that. I was on a hunt for sad pieces. We buried my Grandmother today, and she was more like a mother. I need to just hurry up and feel this. I want the gaping hole in my gut to go away. You have done sorrow proud here.
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I'm truly sorry for your loss... and I really think that writing it all out is the best way to get it to go away. But keep her in you, and I hope you're better again soon.
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I don't use this word often but Wow!
What an amazing poem. This is such a unique and beautiful love story and you've written it with such amazing word choices and beautiful original lines and expressions. This poem touched me very deeply and I know I shall read it again and again. It's marvelous. At first, it concerned me that you changed tenses here and there, but then again, I'm not terribly concerned about it. The poem is so magnificent that I just love it.
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