that in the end, you and I reduce to a problem of motion,
or a child's idle riddle?
Perhaps it is due to all the falls
and the late nights,
but I thought we were more than that.
It's so hard to bear that we should end this way,
with this impossible combination:
the weightless feel of new love in June in the Botanical Gardens,
and the elevator-drop nausea of irremediable fact.
I never saw this coming.
Should I have?
A new CGI-fed generation finds us less thrilling--
special effects having replaced
flesh and bone,
balance and muscle memory.
One magic obliterates another.
My faith, though, is the old familiar kind,
rooted in our hands holding each others' bodies, suspended,
hearts lit like floodlamps on a string.
Our landscape has always been nothing more than
a small platform, a swing, and thin air.
In the same way that I believed the next dot on the map would be there--
that the tents would go up and the crowds would come--
I never questioned that you would always catch me.
It was me who insisted that we not use a net during performances,
so entire was my confidence in your touch and your outstretched arms.
I was wrong,
and it is the surprise of it that is worse than the concrete rushing close
with its merciless kiss.
I wonder why you gave me up to the air and let me fall?
Ah well. I shall have the rest of my life to ponder that.
_______
better to have trusted and fell than to never have trusted at all? not sure.
ReplyDelete'Our landscape has always been nothing more than
ReplyDeletea small platform, a swing, and thin air...'
indeed. The human condition, the human heart, seems to require a lot of falling, since we refuse to believe we don't have wings.
I hate those gravitational laws.
Whenever I see the word "Satori" I instantly think of the band Bauhaus. They're one of the groups that I grew up with, and know every song by heart.
ReplyDeleteSome heartrendingly wonderful lines!
ReplyDeleteGuess I'll pick myself up, dust myself off.......
How DO we stand it?
ALOHA from Honolulu
Comfort Spiral
~ > < } } ( ° > <3
Wow, such a sting in this. 'the surprise of it that is worse than the concrete rushing close
ReplyDeletewith its merciless kiss.' Oh yes. Contusions of the heart can hurt worse and longer than any other kind. Well said Shay.
oh my... i feel such surprise here...
ReplyDeleteI love a bunch of the lines, but this was one of my favorites--"worse than the concrete rushing close with its merciless kiss."
ReplyDeleteEverybody has been here and done it.
Anyway you say it - it's gotta hurt.
ReplyDeleteI feel the sting and heartbreak..sad and powerful!
ReplyDeleteFB...
ReplyDeleteI can envision this lament being read to that haunting Saint-Saens tune being played as back drop music. You have a way about morose partings of the way my friend.
Someday Baby....Someday.
For what it's worth, I've never been able to do that trust exercise where you're supposed to fall back into the arms of someone waiting to catch you.
ReplyDeleteWonderful, if terrible sad poem.
Mosk the Lousy Cheer-Up Machine
"....hearts lit like floodlights on a string".......no one writes heartbreak like you do, Shay. I am sorry for the pain that these lines speak so clearly.
ReplyDeleteI love Stanzas 3, 6, and 7. And also your final 7 lines.
ReplyDeleteI think your ending means that the final brutal fall did not kill the speaker; it just injured her severely enough that she will probably spend the rest of her life immobilized, completely helpless, unable to do anything but revisit the question asked at the end of the poem.
Sorry, Callie, the end is a grim joke, as the "rest of her life" is only going to last about another second.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the saddest things I've ever read.
ReplyDelete"In the same way that I believed the next dot on the map would be there--
that the tents would go up and the crowds would come--
I never questioned that you would always catch me."
That's heartbreaking.
That last stanza is pure magic. The concrete rushing... that must be exactly how it feels to have a once-perfect connection severed. Well done, Shay.
ReplyDeleteOuch!!! This is the ultimate description of "Love hurts!
ReplyDeleteI liked Lindi Ortega and the message of the song:~)