The past became a foreign place;
love was more abundant there,
with tangled beads, cheesecloth and lace,
and everyone had longer hair.
His was auburn and thick,
and she longed to run her fingers through it.
She watched and waited every day
for him to pass her way
when they were younger –
she remembered that hunger
until it ached inside her.
But their love was thwarted by time,
the years grew mountainous and harder to climb
and he remained a memory
unrequited was all it would ever be.
Kim M. Russell, 12th April 2019
My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Poems in April Day 12 Fireblossom Friday: Love
On Day 12, Shay has gone back to the stuff poetry is made of: Love.
She says that poems have been written about every kind of love, and every emotion connected with it, from the giddy beginnings of romantic love, to the ruin and despair of losing love.
Today, Shay would like us to write about love for someone who does not know we love them. The guy at the music store, the gal in the apartment across the hall. That actor on the screen, that character in our novel. We can write about someone we actually know or know of, or we can imagine someone. We could complicate it: maybe they’re married or there’s an age difference, there they are, making our hearts beat faster anyway.
Ah. That love of yesterday. Sweet ache. “The past became a foreign place;” such a sad sweet ache. I wonder about these unrequited loves. They always hurt so baldly
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😊
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Badly, that is
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I think you got it right the first time, Toni!
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Ah those Jane Austen novels! That’s what this poem makes me think of, a girl curled up on a window seat, absorbed in another time and sighing over a man from the past.
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😊
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I thought I was sending out all the right messages, loudly and clearly, but…nothing.
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Story of my life.
I couldn’t write about this sort of thing today. It would have sent me into a downward spiral.
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Unrequited love, you couldn’t have said it better, poignant and melancholy 💕
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Thank you, Ellecee.
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I love this poem, from start to finish!!
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Thank you, Annell!
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Ah, I remember the days of cheesecloth and lace! This makes me nostalgic in a good way.
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I love that looking back to the days of longer hair. Smiles. Unrequited love is the only love I have ever been any good at, lol, at least with humans.
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Thanks Sherry.
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So sweet! I love this line “the years grew mountainous and harder to climb…”
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Thanks Viv!
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🙂
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Time paints things a bit differently, but love leaves deep roots.
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Sometimes we’re lucky. 🙂
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This is good, Kim. I could be him or her, I think you might be? I have a couple of what if’s also. Though when I met Mrs. Jim I had longer hair and rode a motorcycle. And was still in college part time at a riper age. I’m glad she took the chance on me, I sometimes wonder for the both of us what if (my ‘poem’ for today tells one outcome).
..
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Thanks Jim. You and Mrs Jim are a great couple and proof that soul mates do exist.
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Glad to say my long-auburn-haired young man of that era was NOT a case of unrequited love (albeit brief). Which, for me, made this poem all the more nostalgic.
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I found mine again after nearly 20 years!
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Nailed it. The poem is a high shelf what the love still waits, unrequited.
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Thanks Brendan.
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Spot on Kim! A love never had can be quite painful, sometimes more than the one we had and then lost. You captured that beautifully here!!
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Thank you, Carrie!
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sigh. I know him 😉
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🙂
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