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Posts Tagged ‘role model’

Dear Ludwig,




Before I knew of you,
I knew your music.
When I turned the flat metal handle
of my pale pink jewelry box,
Für Elise would play as a ballerina
in a white tutu would spin and spin
and I would hum along
until the music slowed
into garish metallic plinks.
Part of me envied Elise—
that someone would write her
such a beautiful song.
Now I know you wrote it for Therese,
a woman you wanted to marry,
but in transcription
your handwriting was misspelt,
and the error lasts to this day.
And Therese, she had no interest
in marrying you.
Oh, Ludwig, I, too, know
how the heart sometimes longs
for what it will never have.
I know how our words are twisted
till they plink, till the plunk.
I know how mistakes
sometimes stay with us forever.
What I meant to say is Happy Birthday,
Thank you for daring to love
even when it hurt.
Thank you for transforming your pain
and rejection into music so relevant
that 250 years later its played
as cell phone ring tones.
Thank you for teaching me
as a girl how to hum along—
for giving me the reason
to turn that flat metal handle
again and again and again.

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