zero? cn ?99In her first poetry post in a week, she continues her sad theme of love at risk, distance and desperation.
This is a particularly painful read, depicting someone who sees the love of her life slipping through her fingers and she is helpless to stop it.
Perhaps in the distant past, in poetry long removed from the web, she may have expressed such anguish. But while she has expressed pain, anger and other emotions in her poetry over the last year and a half, none rises to the level of desperation as this poem does.
This despair is so poignant, I can’t help but sympathize.
I’ve been where she is and reading her poem brought it all back – only in my case, I was the cause of my romantic demise, where she appears to be someone who doesn’t have control of the situation.
Each of her last few poems has depicted a love affair that is moving beyond her grasp, although this latest says this literally, saying how helpless she is in this matter, and how she has to leave it all in his hands to save the romance or not.
It is not clear from the tone of the poem if he will. In fact, she seems to have her doubts. This is why she is making this last-ditch effort to convince him their love is worth saving.
“I place it in your hands, all of it,” she writes.
Then, she gives a possible clue as to who he might be when she uses the word “midweight,” a boxing term.
This may also give a clue as to where and when she met him since one of her last published pieces for us was in one of our magazines, in which she did a feature on a local boxing gym. I recall how great she looked with her boxing gloves on and standing in the midst of very powerful men. Apparently, one of them was struck in the same way and struck up a conversation that eventually led to romance.
The term also plays into the concept of conflict, and the perception of throwing in the towel, a boxing term for surrendering. She is admitting defeat, awarding him a victory in the bout of love.
She is stepping back, scared, holding her breath as to the outcome, something she clearly has done before. So much so that it has become normal for her to hold her breath and wait for something, if not the intensity of this love, then of other things in her life.
The poem suggests and even greater degree of separation than in the previous poems, as she watches her lover grow rather away, more remote, perhaps just beyond her finger tips, the passion she felt at the beginning, tried to keep contained in head, acted upon and has since become a mere “idea” and he appears not to be in the same physical space, “the idea of you, and not the truth.”
She is giving up the decision making to him, “into those hands there and not there.” He is still in her life, but barely, and she no longer has control over what might happen next and she must trust him to make the right choice, to trust him that he will still b e there to hold her up in a relationship that she is describing as “inadvertently coveted.”
This brings back to the love affair of the mind, when she questioned if she should pursue it in reality even though she knew it would destroy his world, as it ultimately came close to doing, and later, when it she was faced with a choice of joining him as a couple or keeping her own identity she ultimately chose herself, a decision she clearly still regrets, especially now as he grows more and more remote and she is helpless to bring him back. He must choose to return or not.
She can do nothing else.
She describes her state as “mid fall” and then gives him an offer, saying he will benefit from her descent if only he will save her. She is humbling herself before him, a reversal from her previous position when she chose “I” over “We.” She is casting her ego aside in order to retain love, and for someone who is as talented as she is, and desirable, not to mention ambitious, this is a remarkable move.
She clearly shows the depth of emotions she is capable of, and a deep, passionate love for someone.
And yet, this may well have come too late.
He may not feel the same way as she does.
Her use of “hands” signifies a number of possible meanings, such as holding her heart in his hands – possibly boxer’s hands, hands that are like a safety net she needs to catch her when she falls.
His hands are strong hands, echoing the “mid weight” description of them from the first verse, they are able hands, which may or may not be there in her time of need.
One can easily see her as a petitioner, carrying her bundle of concerns and humbly offering them to some powerful figure.
“I place it in your hands… and step back frightened,” she writes.
She holds her breath as she awaits his verdict.
She gives “all of it “to him “if only the idea of him” and “not the truth.”
Truth is one of the major elements of all of her poetry, or as she once wrote and I misread, tearing down to the bone of it (or something like that).
What truth means here remains a bit opaque in that she might also be surrendering what she knows to be “right and true” in order to appease her heart.
The poem does not say how he responds but leaves the reader hanging with the question as to if he will save her or not.
“There is nothing else,” she write, and offers this surrender, this falling from her perch as a victory for him, he will bear her and benefit.
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