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If I Could Soak You In Like Sunlight

by Megan Guimbellot

It might take a bottle of gin to make me put pen to paper and write these things to you// but that's only because I remember you best in a swirl of liquor and streetlights/ fuzzy in the 3 a.m. hour.

You were never so complete//so youfully you/ before midnight
Before the bars shut off their neon signs and there was nothing left to beckon the drunks and the lonely home but cold beds and empty streets// the hints of morning were not enough to take any of us
to where
we needed
to be.

I don't think I've told anyone this
Ever
But my favorite version of you is indistinct,
like shadows,
like memories,
morning light on dew-damp leaves// shifting and soaking into yesterday.

I try to picture you in sunlight/ a black figure on green grass
cloaked in white mist that hangs heavy
like the past//
holding out a martini instead of a mimosa from a traveling case.

But when I get close
you are just a silhouette/ a cardboard cutout of how things used to be//out of touch
and out of place
with the technicolor brilliance of today.

05/10/2014

Posted on 05/11/2014
Copyright © 2024 Megan Guimbellot

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by George Hoerner on 05/11/14 at 09:01 PM

Unfortunately far too many of us are seen only in some dense fog. When that happens, which it does a lot to me, I suspect that it is the only way we see our self. We aren't really sure who we are and regardless of the age we have either never grown up or never gotten a grasp on our own reality.

Posted by Philip F De Pinto on 05/11/14 at 10:45 PM

this poem is lovely in all its rendering and soulfully complete.

Posted by V. Blake on 05/13/14 at 06:59 PM

You are better at poem titles than anyone I know. Every time I see something in the New Poems section and go, "That's a great title," it's by you. Seriously, well done. It also helps that the content lives up to the name. You have a unique voice that's easy and accessible without being shallow. I'm sure I've probably mentioned by this point, but I envy you that.

Posted by Richard Vince on 11/15/21 at 10:45 PM

yes. i know this feeling, all too well. thankfully i have begun to realise that the last stanza is true. very visual and evocative.

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