Hopeful or Hopeless?
I'm in love with love itself.
This, I must confess...
About the Creator
Rowan Finley
Father. Academic Advisor. Musician. Writer. My real name is Jesse Balogh.
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Foot Bindings
I asked my grandmother how she knew she'd fallen in love. I am not sure I ever did love him, she said. This was before I met my husband. I was naive, a naked spring, a raw nerve of a thing. That cannot ever be me, I knew. Sadness swept in gently like a Moscow thaw. It is no simple thing, looking into a woman's vast soul and seeing its foot bindings. Now, in Italy divorced with my skin singed off, when I say I don't love him mean: I have succeeded at feeling nothing most days and it mostly works. Do you want the comfort of Nothing? Do you want Nothing, too? Be warned: you'll never be free, even when you are nothing. Here is what doesn't work: Accepting the stages of grief. Talking about it. Sitting with the feeling. Missing him—no, the person you were when you believed in death do us part. Writing poetry. That, too. When I say I don't love him I mean: I feel capsized in an endless, starved tide. What sometimes works: selective memory. You must forget ripe tomatoes and his beard and feeling perfectly sheltered in a big blue world. Forget coffee in bed, laughter watching TV, blowing out the candles on the birthday cake and the quiet all-encompassing knowledge that you are chosen. Remember only how love turned to a banal everyday survival act, a trapeze act unsure whether he will catch you, how the warmth stagnated and became sour, remember the foot bindings and remember the resentment boiling in your veins as you stick it out for the kids. Six-hour Netflix binges help, too. A man's fingers tracing your spine. Frozen pizza at 2 a.m. Random trips to the museum just to stand near things that last a while. The realization that crying won’t change anything. Seeing that life is just a dream, and refusing to participate in your own suffering. Bite your fist. Walk on eggshells around joy. When I say I don't love him, I mean he didn’t break my heart, he just stopped touching it and it forgot how to beat right.
By Ella Bogdanova2 days ago in Poets
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Page corner buckles under my turning finger; paper creases once.
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from death into life
Young Aldin of Wiloh had never contemplated death. It was almost strange — so many around him had the tendency to obsess over it, to clamor and claw almost desperately at their own perceptions of the end to know death as much as they could: when it would come, why it would come, where it would take them when it did.
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Comments (6)
Maybe it’s not about being hopeful or hopeless but about being honest in a world that forgets how to feel. ✨
Hah cool! Thanks for linking this for me. Great minds think alike, or whatever they say about that 😉
Relatable for sure.
Being in love with love. I feel that's a good thing! Loved your Haiku!
This is a thought provoking Haiku associated with a mind bending photo. The image is clearly upside down and the poem confesses love for love’s sake rather than someone or something. The traditional expression is hopeless romantic and yet the poem leads with hopeful as if giving the reader a choice. Can I ever lose if I’m in love with being in love?Of course once I congratulate myself for solving the puzzle the warning bells sound. Feel free to tell me I’m off by a country mile. Loved the poem and the photo, Rowan!
Both in equal measures maybe? Must say; that image is amazing!