There was a day when we were happy, right on the edge of something wonderful. We were going to be poets and we were going to be professors and we were going to save the world one sentence at a time, then. We weren’t holding on to fantasies, we were living them, I in my baseball dress and you in your tricycle shorts. We were learning to make things out of air, fashioning with our words things that we could only see if we shut our eyes tight and listened.
There was a day when we were lonely; there were days and weeks and months and years when we were lonely. Poetry came harder and harder, and there was no moment of relief, no moment of release where we could be happy with what we wrote. Professorship seemed a ridiculous, far-away goal, a fantasy. Everything seemed a fantasy then, when I would come to school with purpling bruises under my eyes and you would go to work with the same sweater for a week at a time.
There will be a day when we are happy again: we are learning to make fire, now, fire in people’s minds, fire in their hearts, in their guts, in their eyes. Grim and determined, your jaw set as you file away notebook after notebook, my hand cramped from a constant flow of words, we cling to our fantasies now, hold them desperately as if they could turn away the night, as if they could pull us towards the dawn, as if they could do what the words as yet cannot, and make us free.
In other news, one day I will break the habit of the academic three.
3 comments:
The academic three is awesome. As is this piece. I thought that it was going to be depressing and one of those hopeless being-a-writer-is-a-romantic-aspiration-and-we're-all-going-to-have-to-conform-to-the-mold-eventually type things, but it was very much more uplifting than I expected. My favourite paragraphs are the first, second, and third, chronologically. My only qualm was the use of the word "guts", which I felt was a little too visceral for the eloquence of the rest of the piece, making it stand out in an awkwardish way.
"we were going to save the world one sentence at a time" - I love you <3 This piece feels like it embodies all us Heart Rapist writers :)
Um, wow. MSMC entirely.
I agree about the word "guts." Honestly during that sentence I was waiting for you to say loins! lol
I really like the title a lot, it made the piece feel nostalgic and a little hopeless but, at the same time, determined to make it happen.
"we were going to save the world one sentence at a time" - awesome.
MSMC too!!
Damn you Marta COME ON.
*sigh*
I like tricycle shorts. And the same sweater for a week.
I like all the remarks about clothing in this piece. I don't know why, I just do.
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