His Son’s Sweetheart

/ Taryn / Leave a comment

Standing in the soft, washed out light she looks

like a memory he would be better off forgetting.

As he watches, the sun, the breeze, the hem of her skirt,

they all caress the flesh of her thigh like a menagerie of lovers.

He can’t help but envy them. The last time

he knew what it was to touch youth he was young himself.

The way she stands there, with her back arched,

makes him imagine her old enough to wear

the naked posture of maturity naturally.

But when she throws back her head, laughing carelessly,

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I Am the Place in Which Something Has Occurred

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I am the place in which something has occurred.

First love was fertilized in me under the warm moonlit air of summer.

For two weeks it was fed until that love

became the stage on which my heart would break;

for the first time.

Bold, youthful exuberance built architectural wonders,

in the form of dreams, in my mind only to have

repetitive waves of realism wash them away like sandcastles on the shore.

I have been a safe harbor for strangers on nights

when loneliness was a little too rough.

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An Honest Politician: His Pre-election Apology

/ Taryn / 2 Comments

I am sorry I have to give this speech.

I am sorry I am not the kind of man you hope to vote for.

I made mistakes when I was younger;

to those who my mistakes harmed,

if my apology wasn’t enough

or if it never came, I’m sorry.

I apologize for those people who will make your troubles theirs,

not out of empathy, but because party lines

have placed you in the crossfire.

I am sorry that in my pursuit of an office

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Uneasy Company

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Persephone, she haunts me.

Hades, he fascinates me.

And I, well, I don’t understand me.

She who is everything I am not.

He who is everything I want

And I, who am lost.

I fear her because she knows I don’t.

He knows the opposite holds true for him.

I, well, color me confused.

She is the image in the mirror.

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Literally Me

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I am a creature created by narrative.

Every time I emerge from the pages of a book,

I trade a small piece of my soul for a piece of theirs.

I emerge rejuvenated by heartbreak,

Heroism,

And happily ever after.

A fundamental renaissance. A metamorphic reincarnation

Formed in the fires of fiction

Under the pressure of imaginings, that to many

Are nothing but falsehoods.

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