But I'm still posting it anyway because I just wrote it. I feel guilty for writing it. And I need someone to tell me that life is okay.
Both Easy and Difficult
You see, there (yes, there) your desk once stood.
And there, maybe in that dusty corner,
A forgotten guitar had lain.
You see, there, your easel and paint brushes.
And maybe, there, your pillow once rested,
Your face pressed tight into it,
Tight just like the night you slept on the couch,
On the eve of your leaving.
It is not that I miss you,
Because I cannot forget your words,
But on nights like this,
When the cold creeps into the bed
And my toes freeze,
I cannot help but remember a time
When life made sense in little moments.
It is not that I still love you,
But that on dark nights I guess I do forget.
You see, I am still finding symbols of your leaving me,
A sock here and there,
And even though I've moved it all to the closet,
I still find souvenirs of a different time.
How do you remove someone from your life?
I cannot help but remember a time before your craze,
Before the tears you made,
When things were stable and I had a home.
I do not love you.
I do not miss you.
I miss a ghost that does not exist,
A remembrance of "always" and promises
That dissipates between fingers
Like the burning of a cigarette.
Justine Bienkowski
Tell me I'm not a horrible person for writing this. I feel achey tonight in my heart area.
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oh Justine, you are not terrible for writing this. I think you are remarkably wonderful and sane.
ReplyDeleteI like that this poem consists mainly of negation, filled with things the speaker is not. This mimics the absence of that other body in this poem; in a way, this places the speaker in control because she is able to create her own absence rather than having absence happen to her.
Despite all this negation, there are still some artifacts of the relationship left. All these pieces are so fragmented and out of place. It is the strangeness of something remaining after the reason for its existence has gone. These pieces don't add up or make any sense without the context of the person who owned them. It's weird that a sock is a sock when the foot is no longer there that filled it.
I particularly like: "It is not that I miss you, / Because I cannot forget your words". Despite all the relationship artifacts that the speaker finds in her life, it is the continuation of the invisible things that really occupy space in the speaker's life.
I get a real sense of achyness from this poem. It's a feeling that I guess is necessary to feel for a while...but I can always come over and try to combat this feeling with a pint of delicious ice cream and an awful kung-foo movie/vhs tape.
P.S. Just to clarify, I meant "awful kung-foo movie/GREAT vhs tape".
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