Poem

This is the first poem I have written in a long time (in high school I used to write quite a lot, as some of you may know. :) ).

This is the first draft. The language is very rough, obviously, but some imageries are interesting.

Poem

When I love you, I am a river
Rushing towards you
And you are mountains in the distance, your rocks and boulders
channeling me into narrower and narrower straits.
Or I am a fire, my tongues flickering, burning
For you, and you are the fireplace, containing me,
turning me into a pile of ash.

I am a shadow, standing at your door, the light
From your window shattering me, tearing me to pieces.
Or I am, I am a country, and you are another, between us
An endless border. Though all my people long to belong to you
You separate us with walls, with guns, with armies and sentries.
Or you are a song, sung in a luminous
voice in a foreign language, with words rich and opaque
And I am American; you are incomprehensible.
Or I am an army, and you are an impregnable city.
Though I surround you with troops, and you are starving.
You’d rather be burned
than capitulate, and shoot at me with poisonous darts.

Or I am sand, and you are water. No matter how small I try
To make myself, to dissolve into you
We are separate and distinct.
When they run us through a filter, you are pure again
And I am left behind.

There is no solution.
Always, dear, always, when I love you,
I am on the outside.
You are on the inside.