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bailey-bPoems
i wonder if someone else called you to tell them a story because the nightmares wouldn't cut their ropes, would you kick your heels upon your desk and spin a tale as long as the night itself until they fell asleep? "a beautiful red-haired princess lived in a land far far away but she was so amazing that the prince would scale the highest of the mountainsides to see her" you were always writing me into fairytales and sometimes they helped fight the darkness did I ever tell you about those nightmares? how I heard an old Chicano folktale about La Llorona and how she came to me in a dream weeping and screeching and clawing at her eyes and shrieking "Ayudame!" through the tangle of the black woods in front of me twisting riddles through my slumber. do you know that sometimes during barre stretch, when we shoot our legs skyward, or when i'm filing college interviews your smile-laugh ripples through my ears and I grit my teeth through peppermint pain and try to drown it out? did I ever tell you when I got the phrases "La Llorona"y "la rana" scrambled up in my brain? La maestra told us we would be leyendo un cuento sobre la rana en the pond and I thought she meant a story of La Llorona the wailing woman maestro of a symphony of screams and my heart stopped working and I told her, "No puedo, I can't." and she said, "Silly girl, la rana es 'the frog'." and laughed. do you remember when they took me to a grave and you told me about cancer and how you thought that you'd die young? you said it so calmly as if the dead around you were offering up their Easter lilies as a bridal bouquet to be tossed to a lucky relative and i just looked at you with sea-glass eyes and you kissed me as the tears spilled over into silent rivers down my cheeks i wonder if sometimes when you listen closely you can hear the bottle-sculptures' mouths lisping with the wind or la rana croaking in the pond and smile-laughing right along with you at me. if the story has a different beginning now or a middle or an end or if you've written me out entirely or maybe just changed my fate "a beautiful red-haired princess was punished for her vanity and doomed to wander and wail for all of eternity for she had done wrong." and am I La Llarona, the weeping woman? because that's all I ever seemed to do The dreams are gone now or, rather, the nightmares but there are some things more haunting in reality. i wonder if she hears the coded tick-tock of the static or the shrill cries of tortured souls forever searching forever lost i wonder if you love her more than me.
0
Oct 23, 2010
Oct 23, 2010 at 11:22 AM UTC
La Llorona
i wonder if someone else called you to tell them a story because the nightmares wouldn't cut their ropes, would you kick your heels upon your desk and spin a tale as long as the night itself until they fell asleep? "a beautiful red-haired princess lived in a land far far away but she was so amazing that the prince would scale the highest of the mountainsides to see her" you were always writing me into fairytales and sometimes they helped fight the darkness did I ever tell you about those nightmares? how I heard an old Chicano folktale about La Llorona and how she came to me in a dream weeping and screeching and clawing at her eyes and shrieking "Ayudame!" through the tangle of the black woods in front of me twisting riddles through my slumber. do you know that sometimes during barre stretch, when we shoot our legs skyward, or when i'm filing college interviews your smile-laugh ripples through my ears and I grit my teeth through peppermint pain and try to drown it out? did I ever tell you when I got the phrases "La Llorona"y "la rana" scrambled up in my brain? La maestra told us we would be leyendo un cuento sobre la rana en the pond and I thought she meant a story of La Llorona the wailing woman maestro of a symphony of screams and my heart stopped working and I told her, "No puedo, I can't." and she said, "Silly girl, la rana es 'the frog'." and laughed. do you remember when they took me to a grave and you told me about cancer and how you thought that you'd die young? you said it so calmly as if the dead around you were offering up their Easter lilies as a bridal bouquet to be tossed to a lucky relative and i just looked at you with sea-glass eyes and you kissed me as the tears spilled over into silent rivers down my cheeks i wonder if sometimes when you listen closely you can hear the bottle-sculptures' mouths lisping with the wind or la rana croaking in the pond and smile-laughing right along with you at me. if the story has a different beginning now or a middle or an end or if you've written me out entirely or maybe just changed my fate "a beautiful red-haired princess was punished for her vanity and doomed to wander and wail for all of eternity for she had done wrong." and am I La Llarona, the weeping woman? because that's all I ever seemed to do The dreams are gone now or, rather, the nightmares but there are some things more haunting in reality. i wonder if she hears the coded tick-tock of the static or the shrill cries of tortured souls forever searching forever lost i wonder if you love her more than me.
Written by
bailey-b
American
Oct 23, 2010
Oct 23, 2010 at 11:22 AM UTC
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