Lullabies by Lang Leav Page B

exhumed, I answered. And brought to life in a flash of brilliance.
    What was it like to be loved in return? asked Joy.
It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence.
    What was it like to lose him? asked Sorrow.
There was a long pause before I responded:
    It was like hearing every good-bye ever said to me — said all at once.

Acceptance
There are things I miss
that I shouldn’t,
and those I don’t
that I should.
     
Sometimes we want
what we couldn’t —
sometimes we love
who we could.

Fading Polaroid
    My eyes were the first to forget. The face I once cradled between my hands, now a blur. And your voice is slowly drifting from my memory, like a fading polaroid. But the way I felt is still crystal clear. Like it was yesterday.
    There are philosophers who claim the past, present, and future all exist at the one time. And the way I have felt, the way I feel — that bittersweet ache between wanting and having — is evidence of their theory.
    I felt you before I knew you and I still feel you now. And in that brief moment between — wrapped in your arms thinking, how lucky I am, how lucky I am, how lucky I am —
    How lucky I was.

Thoughts
Dawn turns to day,
as stars are dispersed;
wherever I lay,
I think of you first.
     
The sun has arisen,
the sky, a sad blue.
I quietly listen —
the wind sings of you.
     
The thoughts we each keep,
that are closest to heart,
we think as we sleep —
and you’re always my last.

Dyslexia
    There were letters I wrote you that I gave up sending, long before I stopped writing. I don’t remember their contents, but I can recall with absolute clarity, your name scrawled across the pages. I could never quite contain you to those messy sheets of blue ink. I could not stop you from overtaking everything else.
    I wrote your name over and over — on scraps of paper, in books and on the back of my wrists. I carved it like sacred markings into trees and the tops of my thighs. Years went by and the scars have vanished, but the sting has not left me. Sometimes when I read a book, parts will lift from the pages in an anagram of your name. Like a code to remind me it’s not over. Like dyslexia in reverse.

Dead Poets
    Her poetry is written on the ghost of trees, whispered on the lips of lovers.
    As a little girl, she would drift in and out of libraries filled with dead poets and their musky scent. She held them in her hands and breathed them in — wanting so much to be part of their world.
    It wasn’t long before Emily began speaking to her, then Sylvia and Katherine; their voices rang in unison, haunting and beautiful. They told her one day her poetry would be written on the ghost of trees and whispered on the lips of lovers.
    But it would come at a price.
    There isn’t a thing I would not gladly give, she thought, to join my idols on those dusty shelves. To be immortal.
    As if reading her mind, the voices of the dead poets cried out in alarm and warned her about the greatest heartache of all — how every stroke of pen thereafter would open the same wound over and over again.
    What is the cause of such great heartache? She asked. They heard the keen anticipation in her voice and were sorry for her.
    The greatest heartache comes from loving another soul, they said, beyond reason, beyond doubt, with no hope of salvation.
    It was on her sixteenth birthday that she first fell in love. With a boy who brought her red roses and white lies. When he broke her heart, she cried for days.
    Then hopeful, she sat with a pen in her hand, poised over the blank white sheet, but it refused to draw blood.
    Many birthdays came and went.
    One by one, she loved them and just as easily, they were lost to her. Somewhere amidst the carnations and forget-me-nots, between the lilacs and mistletoe — she slowly learned about love. Little by little, her heart bloomed into a bouquet of hope and ecstasy, of tenderness and betrayal.
    Then she met you, and you brought