I have wanted
to love you. Not just
to love you, but to love you
in the way you want to be loved.
This is not always the same thing.
A woman walks out into night
and it holds her. Sometimes
this comforts her. Sometimes
she is terrified. Sometimes
she loses her own edges
and becomes night.
There is no loss in this.
There is a moment
just before we say
I love you when the feeling
is truer than the syllables
that follow. That’s what
I am trying to do.
What night does.
Beautiful!
“…to love you/in the way you want to be loved.” yes, but… is that necessarily the way you NEED to be loved…?
“There is a moment/just before we say//I love you when the feeling/is truer than the syllables//that follow.” I hear the thunderclapping of truth behind these lines.
You know, it’s interesting (though I don’t know if you agree) that I can lift every feminine reference in this poem, change it to masculine, and the poem reads to me as true, as true for me as it is for you.
I LOVE that comment … I wish we had a nongendered pronoun for exactly this instance … In Finland, there is ONLY a nongendered pronoun, han, so you never quite know if it’s male or female …
sometimes we can get away with using plural non-gendered pronouns: them/they/their, even when the subject is clearly singular. but, alas, not “sometimes” enough…
ed … will you say more about this? I am not sure what you mean here … I mean I get it in general, but with this poem?
i DID mean it in the general sense, rosemerry.
as for this poem, i agree that a non-gendered pronoun would be such a proper thing, such an inclusive one as well. for all the precision english provides, it could use a dose or two of ambiguity and fuzziness.
I get it! I get it! Thanks r