Bittersweet You
Poem
A: I breathe your name:
I whisper it like a beautiful secret
To drift onto the empty night,
Hear it fall with the snowflakes
And echo off the stones,
And come right back to my ears,
Ringing louder than ever.
The thought of you
Sends shivers
Like feathers to my bones,
Tingling my whole body
It makes me feel faint
Like you’ve taken a hammer to my head.
Inside me is a bottle of poison
Corked, bubbling up, hot
Ready to burst at any moment
It’s burning me inside,
And tearing me limb from limb,
Making me crave
For every moment we have together.
A, stay with me.
I wish I could ask you to take my hand,
Together we’d fly across the land
Over the trees, over the clouds, far away,
To a world we’ve both imagined.
I will dream of us always,
Lying in beauty side by side,
Our hair spread out like silk about us,
On a bed of dreams and leaves
Golden and fragrant in the afternoon sun.
Birds above, singing the songs we love to hear.
Such a sweet dream-memory,
I’ll keep it locked forever in my secret heart.
There is so much to do together
So much that we’ll never begin,
The acid rain will eat the bitter snow.
I’ll have to let you go.
And now we’re sitting close-so close,
Almost lover-near,
My heart starts beating and I almost tell you
Though my heart nearly faints with fear
Almost take your pale hand in mine
Almost say the words.
But I find the courage only in my dreams.
I cannot speak what’s in my mind.
Something transfixes me about
Your enormous eyes.
When you sing,
Something beyond words
Tugs at my heart;
I think of the moment when we must part
And the blackness explodes inside and poisons my heart
And I know that this beauty cannot last;
I have to let you go.
Your beauty brings tears to my eyes
I cannot look away from your angelic face.
You make everything OK as long as we’re together,
But when you’re gone I’m torn apart like a leaf in the wind.
What I cannot tell you spreads its venom
Through my throbbing veins from the inside out
What have you done to me?
I am sick, I am unwell, I am undone.
Every time I lie to you
It hurts me deep inside,
Makes me resent you
For something you’ve never done
Makes me hate myself
For the feeling’s that have me undone.
I cannot erase your figure,
Your image is reflected in every mirror I see
Somehow you’ve seared it, so deep inside of me
And everything’s happening too fast
The candle’s burning down
And your slipping through my fingers
And I can’t stop the time.
I want to cry, to beg you to stay with me
I’m alone in this broken town.
I’d scream at you,
Ask you why you’ve done this to me
But I already know you haven’t done anything
It’s just my unlucky fate to fall in love with an angel.
Can you blame an angel for being beautiful?
I always wanted the impossible; to torture myself.
So it’s fitting, somehow, that I should want you
When I can never have you.
I have to let you go.
I am unlucky, lost in love,
The pain I feel is only just beginning
What began as an absent-minded papercut
Is now bleeding like a liquid rose
Bleeding for you,
Can you see my pain?
Waiting for you either to sew up my wound
Or finish me off.
I am placing the knife in your beautiful hands,
Waiting for your decision.
You make me suffer and you don’t even know
How I think about you when the lights are low.
How I only dream of you saying those words to me
Many times I’ve dreamt it.
Here I am, struggling with these feelings,
Don’t leave me behind,
Anna, stay with me.
Drunk on dreams of you
Our bodies entwined,
Our hearts beating as one,
Together, you and I, just “together,”
What a sweet and stupid dream.
I can’t imagine a world without you.
Our souls were meant to be side by side,
You said so yourself.
Bittersweet, the taste of you
Like a fragrant flower open before my face,
Blooming and then being swept away by the cruel wind.
I found you broken on the ground and picked you up
Brushed you off,
And now you’re breaking me.
My eyes burn through tears,
Looking at your beauty,
It’s almost more than I can take,
My heart is pulsing through my chest,
It’s a raw, excruciating ache.
You crept close to my heart and
Before I knew what was happening,
You had dug your beautiful fingers
Deep under my skin, with a smile.
Now I’m your prisoner,
Stuck here in this place of purgatory,
A, save me.
What could be the beginning for us
Is only the end
Of a dream that never was,
When every song I hear is about you
My heart is tender in the place I know
You’ll break it, I’ve seen the cut, the blood,
My broken spirit laying crushed in the mud,
The end is coming,
I’m waiting for the rush of pain
My lingering cries of agony.
The bittersweet of loving you
Will be the end of me.
buy Lëaf Ednïwinga’s book on amazon: Em: A Picture-Book Fable
more by Lëaf Ednïwinga
photograph by Alan Labisch
