June 2013
“they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (via thatwetshirt)
… I’d eat sunlight,
drink poetry, breathe novellas, and when
I’d have my fill, I’d leave you the rest. Itwas this difference, I think, that ended it.
Me, studying you, and you studying
me. We never seemed to get it right when
we thought about what this difference was.
We should have treasured those days of sunlight,
our strolls in the park, when we kept runningcommentary on the gazes running
up and down our bodies—if they knew it
just by looking at us. Your smile, sunlight
warm on my skin, my devout studying
of your long-limbed grace—my religion—was
the only thing on my mind those days whenour love was new—innocent at sunlight.
How foolish we were, studying it when
as with all new things, mistrust sent it running.—Shaindel Beers, closing lines to “Summer 2000 Sestina,” from A Brief History of Time (Salt Publishing, 2009)
