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21 " Raw lust for romance— "
― Mary Szybist , Granted
22 " I have only to touch you to be suddenly liftedinto the cradle of your arms, to surrender completely . . . . "
23 " They pick and play me, as if I were made for them.What was I made for, then? "
24 " Why else would two people shuttheir green blinds and halffall into each other? "
25 " There is courtship, and there is hunger. "
26 " I supposethere are grips from which even angels cannot fly.Even imagined ones. "
27 " From above, you looked small as an afterthought, something lightly brushed in. "
― Mary Szybist , Incarnadine: Poems
28 " Lift up your head.Time to enter yourself.Time to make your own sorrow. "
29 " There were so many things I wanted to tell you.Or rather, I wished to have things that I wanted to tell you.What a thing, to be with you and haveno words for it. What a thing,to be outcast like that.And then everything unfastened.It was like something was always dissolvinginside you—Already it's hard to rememberhow you used to comb your hair or how youtilted your broad face in green shade.Now what seas, what meaningscan I place in you? "
30 " No one remembers.But I remember, under the elm's cool awning,watching you watch the clouds. "
31 " I spent a long time fallingtoward your slender, tremulous face—a long time slipping through starsas they shattered, through sticky cloudswith no confetti in them. "
32 " I only dream of your ankles brushed by dark violets,of honeybees above youmurmuring into a crown. Antique queen,the night dreams on: "
33 " . . . where we lounged through summer days, waiting for something to happen "
34 " You'd been dying so long nothing looked like itself: "
35 " ApologyI didn't mean to say so much to you.I should have thought to let the evening endby looking at the stars subduedinto their antique blue and alabaster hues.Such looking would have fit with my intent.I didn't mean to speak that way to you.If I could take it back, I'd take it, undoit, and replace it with the things I meantto give—not what I let slip (it's true)like any pristine star of ornamental hue.I do not always do what I intend.I didn't mean to say so much to you.It slipped before I saw, before I knew.Or do we always do what we intend?Perhaps it's true and all along I knewwhat I was saying—but how I wanted you.I should have thought to let the evening end.The placid stars seemed filled and then subduedby what I did and did not want to do. "
36 " Cecilia plays a harp and sings "The angels are bitches,the gods are sluts— "
37 " But love requires performance "
38 " Love could have remainedthe arranged thing, the pronouncement. "
39 " Why the sudden anguish (where I rush to him),the swelling in music? "
40 " It would have been easier to give into the shape assigned him, not to have summonedthe cry— "