Peaches and My Past

By Liana DeMasi

I tried to write a poem

About romance

In its truest form,

And I deleted it, 

Because why 

Speak of falsities?

I would write a dictionary 

for you

if i knew its contents. 

Show me,

Tell me,

Taste me. 

My romance 

Has been squeezed 

Onto the top

Of a pin.

I can look at it

With a magnifying glass,

The one I lost

Last summer

While I was staring too hard

At the wrong girl. 

Did you know,

In the South of France,

I realized,

Truly,

I loved her?

Did you know,

In the South of Maine 

She realized,

Truly,

How another tasted? 

There always remains

Redundancy 

In romance. 

I know much of one

And nothing of the other. 

I can’t bite the bullet;

I’m too busy

Biting my lip. 

Are you as tired as I am?

Of complacency 

And convenience 

Being mistaken

For love?

Give me desperation. 

I want someone to think

I am the be all,

The end all,

The reason the moon

Follows the car. 

I want to defy logic 

And comfort

By becoming both. 

Are you as tired as I am?

Of late nights

And early mornings,

Of staring at each other 

Over coffee

Overcompensating our mouths

With caffeine 

Out of fear of speaking truths

That show each other

Who we are?

I want to know you

And me

Through you

And me. 

Are you as tired as I am?

Of being scared of truth? 

I want to show you

The way my tongue

has more than one use. 

I want to make you cum

With knowledge of yourself.

Show me

Who you are

Through rose-colored lips.

I am who I have always been.

I just need you

To take your thumb

And drag open my bottom lip,

Beg for me,

Beg for my truths.

Yearn for me.

Be the moon that follows the car.

I want to convince you I am

The reason it rose this evening;

I want to convince you I am

That novel you’ve searched for. 

I want to convince you I am

The start and the finish

Of every word

You’ve never heard. 

And I want you to say,

“This I have always known,”

As you sink yourself into me 

And breathe a sigh of relief

“This is what i meant,

This is what i meant all along.”

I want to be longed for 

And to long for.

What is it

About you

That tastes like peaches

And honey

And my past?

I’m tired of searching

For what’s right in front of me.

Is it me that fucks it up?

Or the weather?

It was sunny when I met you;

I should stop anticipating showers.

I need to convince you

It is I 

That is the only North Star.

I am exhausted,

Don’t you see?

From knowing people

And knowing nothing of them. 

I yearn to pour myself into your mouth.

It is the emotionally unattached 

I flock to.

I like the taste of familiarity. 

I am telling you a recipe,

Are you listening?

I want you to weep

And speak of regret,

Of having not followed the path

That brought you to me sooner. 

I want you to weep,

Of having ever colored with another. 

I want you to weep,

Of the art you will have to relook at with new eyes. 

I want you to weep,

Of having to relearn love now that I stood before it. 

I want you to weep,

Of longingness. 

Of hope. 

I want you to weep

To the moon ,

To tell her that you are sorry

That you were so long

Commanded by the sun

When she had been in front of you

All along. 

But I open my eyes 

And it is myself weeping

All these truths

To myself in the mirror

For you have gone,

Just as swiftly as the moon,

Just as swiftly as the South of France in mid-June.

---