Last year I wrote a post for World Poetry Day and shared my unpublished poem The edge of dreams. World Poetry Day is on the same day as Harmony Day, and I was going to make an orange theme for my blog but I didn’t have time. Not many people have heard of Harmony Day either, so I don’t think it was a big loss.

I am sharing another poem for this post, and it is much older than the previous one I shared. I haven’t written many poems in the past year and you might have noticed that I don’t really share a lot of them on my blog.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been four and a half years since I wrote this (on the 25th October 2012). I was still pretty young at the time. It wasn’t necessarily about this person, but from what I remember, I was partially inspired to write it by a friend of mine who lived overseas and rarely replied to my texts, and one day we eventually lost touch. A few of this friend’s social media accounts have become inactive, and I suspect my friend is still around but perhaps moved on or started fresh and didn’t think to contact me again. The poem was probably inspired by the intermittent communication between myself and my friend, which bothered me at times even though we were often very close.

Let me know what you think. :)

Before

25th October 2012

With one month to go,
With one pen still leaking ink and printing words and a flurry of sentences flowing across the page,
Something tells me that you know I’ll be there, even before I know I will,
That you know when that day will come,
before you’ll even be there.
Three fortnights back, I’m waiting,
for your sweet response,
but even as I wait,
You know that one week later I’ll be wishing I was many kilometres north,
Wishing for something I’ll never be at.
In the present I’m talking to other people,
Thinking about what time I should leave,
And if every move is dependent on the move before,
How, then, will I know when to rise from my seat and dare to blink,
For if that swift movement means you know I’ll be somewhere,
But so much less sure than before,
Then I dare you,
I dare you to try even more.
You promise you’ll try your best,
That normally you’re good at this,
And as always I trust you,
But only as much as I trust me.
With one month and a week,
The pain in my head begins to fade into the shadows of your oldest melodies,
When you could see without your frames,
When your green eyes opened and you say through the fireworks and ran past the comets,
When the spaces in your mind concealed more than you could take,
And the last boat left you and you turned your head and moved on.
How long ago I met you I can say that was a time when I smiled more than ever before,
Why, you thanked me,
And now I must thank you.