TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Les amours ne sont rien que de piètres adieux;
Rah, n’en sois pas si fâché.
Eh, mer! Tu n’es qu’un serpent amoureux,
Tes mots sont des vagues gachées.

Love is nothing but needy goodbyes;
Rah, don’t act so angry about it.
Hey, sea! You’re nothing but a smitten snake,
Your words are wasted waves.

Les amours ne sont rien que des brindilles sèches;
Rah, n’en sois pas si fâché.
Eh, mer! Tu n’es qu’une bombe sans mèche,
Tes mots sont des ailes arrachées.

Love is nothing but brittle firewood;
Rah, don’t act so angry about it.
Hey, sea! You’re nothing but a defused bomb:
Your words are pluckèd wings.

Les amours ne sont rien que des choses éphémères;
Rah, tu t’en remettras vite.
Eh, mer! Te lasses-tu parfois d’être mère?
Tes mots sont des eaux sans mérite.

*Love is nothing but an ephemeral thing;
Rah, you’ll get over it soon.
Hey, sea! Do you sometimes have enough of being a mother?
Your words are worthless waters.

and i am eleven again
feeling like tomorrow
is a couple yesterday's ago
smothered in cayenne pepper
hot enough to take off taste buds
and tonight i am eating a meal
only worth burning
it tastes like my parents anniversary
it tastes like a zinfandel
left on the counter too long
it's a bad story, see
there's no silverware
'cause my mom sold it
to keep the lights on
and somewhere in heaven
somebody in a suit
doing commentary
on this fiasco
is telling someone else
in a suit that
"you have to eat love with your hands"
so we sit, four plates on the table
for the two of us
my brother's long gone
dad's even further away
& he's not the one who's buried
i carry both their names like anchors
that i cannot unmoor from
while she looks at the empty table
and says something about the news
she says something else
but she's not talking
we aren't proud of this, see
my dad likes to wax his car
he's proud of it
and my mom says
she sees a lot of him in my hands
says, i touch the things i find
like they didn't belong
to people sleeping in the ground
she says i touch photo albums
the same way-
you know,
i never used to believe
that history could repeat itself
not until i could
fast forward seventeen years
and still wake up to smoke alarms
how i would go into our kitchen
to find it empty
and the dinner smoldering
& my mother in her bedroom
looking through family photos
like it's a just another summer day
and the sirens are just the birds
i don't ask, i never say a word
in this moment
i am an archeologist
afraid to dig up the past
cause history repeats itself-
you see
my brother is dead
and my father is gone
they have been for some years now
and my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets their place at the table
like they're still here
and in the confusion
ends up ankle deep
in pictures of how it used to be
she let's dinner burn
and douses it in red pepper
hoping i won't know the difference

i am a concrete project amidst
handsome skyscrapers, like titans
of yore, 'yore', a word
which hasn't been used since
the time it describes.

and just above my edifice,
there is a crow that circles round;
no one understands Eponine,
but everybody loves her.

Yore, yore, she would have been
a thousand times
a lover because all she
could do was
love.

i looked out my fogged-up window,
beyond the crows and urban trash,
and saw myself back in the glass,
me, Eponine,
loved by all,
seen by none.

"It's honorable to love that way,
Eponine, you lovely liar."

i want to be something you can catch
and then let go,
like a reasonable yet fleeting thought
hovering, hesitating above the keyboard;
i want you to type me up through and through,
and then erase me completely,
like i had never even mattered;
i want to jab a neat whole
into your heart,
so you won't feel any hurt;
and later have you show it off
like a 'manly' scar.

i want to be something you can love
(moderately).

Pray that she doesn't plead insane,
When they ask her: "close your eyes":
These men who seem to cause her pain
Do not know more than her disguise.

You'll never hear her whine, complain,
For she lets no one slow her stride;
May the ones who caused her pain
Find her tall and dignified.

There is no cage that can contain
This woman that the Lord has made;
May the ones who caused her pain
Find her proud and unafraid.

Do not assume my will shall wane,
You know, in sum, the price I paid;
May the ones who caused me pain
Find me proud and unafraid.

Ah, yes, I recognize this nightmarish place,
the place you kissed me for the first
time like I was something you could lose
in an instant.

And you kissed me even though
you claimed to have never done it
before,
and I guess they were right when they
said no one really knows how to kiss
during the aftershock;

And you are the aftershock
that never ceases to resound
loudly in my ears
like a nightmare that started
as a dream.

That's right, us.
We were a
storm
that
started with a wave.