[poem] Intimate Strangers

[kaberett]

for Hel
Beloved, please remember that
your words need not always take the form of verse.
It's easiest, perhaps, for you to dance along
these lines of thought and tongue,
but nonetheless:
we can find rhythm, cadence, grace,
outside the walls of this familiar space
for though it's haunted by the echoes of our pasts
    (and when you raise your voice in song
    you're not alone: a chorus whispers from the walls,
    and where you stand determines what and who you hear)
however far we stray: we're not alone.

This poem is perhaps the perfect way
for me to say these things to you:
beat meaning with my words into the anvil of this page--
but am I not a smith? Why then
restrict myself to horseshoes or to nails,
insist my craft is limited
to singular perfection, chill and sharp?
No: I will be brave. This wondering intimacy
does not require the strictures of
my art, my form, to flourish. I will dare
to find another way to speak
my mind: you need not painstaking unpick
the layered meanings of my varied self,
or be always a stranger to my heart.
Instead I'll take your hand, and
if I lead the way
it's still together that
we'll make our way to land.

---

Thank you to the Indigo Girls, from whom I lifted the title; and to alexseanchai and jjhunter for feedback on the draft. It might as well be subtitled "on unpoetical lovers", but it isn't, I don't think.

Comments

[thefairymelusine]

This is lovely, thank you.

[kaberett]

Thank you so much for saying.