You are the light that yonder window breaks.
Like Yorick I knew you well.
You are the Demetrius to my Helena.
The Romeo to my Rosaline.
My unrequited love.

Have you ever done something
and then could not believe
it could possibly have been you?

Have you ever said something
and then cringed when you heard it
exiting your mouth?

That would be me, sometimes . . .

Or, while mentally calculating
your accumulating grocery bill,
have you run into a friend
only to completely lose count?

I have stood in front of the door to my home
trying to lock or unlock the door
using the keyless entry fob from my car.

I have done this --- more than once.

I have, months after getting rid of that car,
searched for its keyless entry fob
on my keychain.

I have spent hours and days
searching for glasses on my head,
for keys that I was holding,
for the purse on my shoulder,
and have managed to miss them completely.

I have called information for a number,
written it down,
and then had to call them back
because I misplaced the number before I could redial the phone.

I have neglected friends and family,
duties and responsibilities,
not from lack of love
or sound intention,
but merely by allowing myself to be distracted.

If I had followed up
on what I knew at seventeen
whales, sharks, mankind ---
might already be saved.

Who knows what my focused mind might have accomplished?

But instead
I put myself to sleep
because the real world
was far too much to bear,
and living in books and dreams
so very much safer
than all the dysfunction awaiting outside.

I met my soulmate at twenty
and then left him behind
marrying one man,
and then another,
who never got me -
instead of the one and only man who truly did.

There's a reason that God protects children and Fools.
There's a purity of heart,
an innocence of spirit,
and . . . occasional lapses in intellect.

So, for all of the lessons I've learned and I've lost,
There are worse things than being a Fool.

Which I remind myself again
as I accidentally call my own cell phone
and then hang up my land line to answer the call.

In parting, I offer what I finally learned, which is

This above all:
To thine own Fool be true.

Cori MacNaughton
6Apr2005

You laugh because of the jokes I tell, but
I laugh because if my thoughts linger I may never laugh again.
So this is how I hide

I hide in my humor
In every joke
In every chuckle
Every time I poke fun
I'm hiding
I'm hiding how I think
How I feel
How I can't stand myself
The way I look
The way I talk
I'm hiding
On Shakespeare's stage
I play the role of a clown
Hiding tears
Hiding my fears
My make up is camouflage
Hidden by white paint and a red nose
Convincing others I'm fine,
I laugh, I joke
I hide.

I fear you. I do.
I fear my fascination with you.
I pull away like the planets press against their rings around the sun,
Reaching for the stillness of the dark beyond
But bound by dazzling heat and light.
Sometimes I see my death in your eyes
Like a moth sees its immolation in the filaments of a lightbulb
But sacrifices life to be
For a moment
Finally warm.

I trust you
As much as one can trust something wild:
I understand
That to touch you might leave
Scars on my hands,
But I think that they would be scars
I would cherish in my later years
And trace among the creases of age
As proof that I had lived without regret.

It is not the heat I fear,
In truth
It is the cold.
It is the passing
Of something bright
Close beside me and then
Beyond
Off into the world
Where I may not follow.

It is the blindness that always comes
When I look away from a brilliant light
And am for a moment paralyzed
By the cold certainty that I will never see again:

I would leave you with something to remember me by,
Some love that refuses to fall away no matter the storm,
No matter the chaos of your fire.
Something quiet and constant
And more enduring than I am.

For

I fear not what you are
But what you aren't
Which, like black water,
Will rush in to fill the void
Once you have gone.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Basically I'm saying, babe, you're hot.  You know its funny, I adore Shakespeare but i could not handle writing like him. All proper and British and modern... I'm too old fashioned for his tastes.

Let's think about it. Shakespeare was a progressive of his days; making words, analogies, that are timeless to this day.

What am I using?

Old tricks of the old writers to quell my taste for old art. Gods knows I describe everything as if I were Dickens, all elongated and profoundly bloated in the most beautiful and adoring way.

But back to where I was. You.

This sonnet is for you. I did promise one this night, did I not? In my head I did, at least. Oh dear, this'll be a surprise in the morning. But at least it is a surprise just for you.

I at least hinted of a sonnet, a sonnet for you, telling of you and our love and how it makes me feel. So here we must go.

You are the moonshine to my midnight, the angel to my demons.

Too much? I dare say, it must be, you have simply gone giddy with giggles. Perhaps a different route should be approached.

If I were a murderess, which in all heart-related actuality I am, I will give this fair promise that in all my running around and cutting out hearts, that yours will simply be those one I keep closest to mine.

Alas, too dark? Oh, my love, but there must be some way to express my doting! Be in not in a dark sonnet, or an adoring sonnet, perhaps a comedic one?

There were two things I was certain of. One, that he was a vampire, and two, that I was irrevocably attracted to him.

Oh, perhaps too comedic. Perhaps too unkind. Perhaps a bit too much paraphrasing. But I digress. Anything I can do to please you, my dearest one? Anyway I can express how I feel without making you laugh, or giggle, or simply chuckle at me?

It cannot be as simple, as you say. It cannot be as easy as holding you close and whispering in your ear how much I love you. Can it?

Well I promise, then, that I will spend my nights whispering towards you my affections, and holding you tight until you can stand my embrace no more. Will that suffice?

Oh, I love you.

And I suppose that's the best way to put it.