Original: Your Pages (2009)

 Old poem this month.  I've been planning for a while to go through some of my old stuff and clean it up a bit.  I don't know that I'm quite satisfied with "Your Pages" yet, but I've always kind of liked it, so I thought I might as well take it out for a spin.  (Note:  I wrote this long before I knew I was aro and ace, but it was never an attempt to be about me - it was always meant to be an unnamed persona.)

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Your Pages

Tear your pages from my book

So I don’t have to read you anymore,

Because every time I catch

A whisper of you in the corner of my eye,

The story writes itself anew.

The same old lovers’ quarrel

With its joy and heartbreak

Rising and falling in time

To the turn of the plot,

Its contradictions in tone,

And its sloppy metaphor.

I just can’t read you anymore.

But every time your eyes

Cross their orbit with mine,

The bad sequel starts taking shape

In the triter parts of my head,

Complete with out-of-character leads

And half-baked plots

Recycled from any old dime-store romance.

Because we’re both so much better than that,

But that’s all we write

When we’re together.

That’s our hackneyed external conflict

Cycling through and through

The same tired literary beats

And thematic mishmash,

And that plot’s long since played out.

Surely there are other stories worth writing,

Other loves worth having,

Other joys worth fighting for.

So I can’t read you anymore.

It’s high time we turn the page

And find someone

Who makes us see the point of happiness

By the glow of their laugh;

Someone who makes us feel

We might be who and where

We want to be, or at least,

Hope we could be someday.

Let’s not even shake hands

But part and follow the line

Of our separate hero’s journeys,

So we can each write new stories

About someone whose songs

Aren’t forever going out of rhyme.

But if I read you one more time…