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    Home»Creative

    After summer

    A poem on the transience of summer
    By Donnalyn XuMarch 14, 2019 Creative 1 Min Read
    A napkin with a kiss on it, a purple dress, a jar of honey, and a pair of hands are scattered on a peach-coloured background.
    Artwork by BrownTown
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    Love, in the slip of a dress sleeve.
    In the mauve neckline that stays,
    the crescent imprint
    on a wine-stained napkin.
    Intimacy only lives
    outside of the body.
    Perhaps there is a romance
    in the world without me; an afterthought
    I instantly regret, but often wonder.
    The first kiss still feels like an ending
    & the city goes on. Always,
    rain. Old light. The unforgiving
    memory. Just once,
    to live idly. To sell myself absence.
    To dream only of what we can touch.


    Love, in the poem I do not write,
    but still wait for. & then listen
    to its slow breathing, the gentle wake
    of a morning in the late February sun,
    yes, you remind me of honey. & yellow silk.
    How we feel in waves & want language
    to be more tender. Even then,
    the silent reckoning of things.
    The dull space between my life
    & your life, as they briefly spill
    into each other, an illusion of
    nearness. That familiar song,
    in which the world passes
    & we all think: never again.

    creative poetry summer

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