When this is all over,
Assuming it’s nice weather,
Let’s take punt of some description and conquer the Thames.
When this is all over,
When we can meet together,
Let’s make all Oxford sick of our songs and games.
The air cries for youthful fun and folly,
The butterflies, birds and brooks are jolly,
I look on and I smile, but inside I’m glum;
Since this promising May
Makes no promise today
The date on which the end of this prison shall finally come.

When this is all over,
Let’s take to fields of clover,
Let’s tear down through New College Lane
Crying for the love of life though you’d think we’re insane
I’m tired of walking and having to feign
Being happy, when the secret to happiness shall always remain:

“Por sentir la gioia,
devi condividerla” - Mark Twain

Messy ink, ragged paper, dust
I laid them down to gather dust
And came back to them only now
Sorting, sitting, wondering how
A few weeks ago these worksheets
Were my world, these were feats
Of daily effort to a common goal
Now, never to be touched by all of us at all.
And saying “To think...” to my sister, who didn’t hear,
And likely never will, I all but let go of a single tear.

Though I may be laughed at for my simplicity
I’d like to assure, I still have the capacity
To learn
To earn,
If they have listened properly to my life and all its cadences,
Each of my doubters’ respects and silences.

I am a girl, since in my soul I know no better, of curious notions:
I take storms in teacups
I collect them, and channel them into whirlpools
When my soul can no longer take the ups
And downs, when I no longer possess the tools
To build a façade, or can no longer hold them
I accumulate the dust from molehills
And make them into volcanoes, from which stem
And flow the plumes of fumes and spills
Of my lava anger.
And if my spirit intellect were stronger,
I would not bottle my emotions.

Why do I feel like I’m falling?
It isn’t me, it’s lost time falling
Away from my feet.

But why should time be lost,
When it is I that am lost,
I acknowledge my defeat

In the face of my own blind pride
And beg that you might spend another second beside
One who deserves to fall from grace,
But in its place
Is flying, soaring, hurtling,
At a rate so star-rate startling
I had to still my coursing thoughts to realise
All of this beauty is passing before my eyes
Passing in my life, and I saw none of it.
I accepted, lived in, used, but saw none of it.
Therefore it isn’t time that should be lost,
When I failed to make the most
Of it, when it’s my value that’s falling
And its is rising, and I’m failing
To match it, in its falling, and its rising,
And realising
Far too late, the worth
Of stopping, admiring, planting ones feet into the earth
For just a minute.
Living in the minute since I am, you are, we are, in it.