Before the Heart, the Image

As you could gather from my "please no poetry" stance, I am not a big fan of poetry. Or to be more accurate, I know what I like, and I enjoy me some Frost or Plath from time to time, but mostly I find poetry a waste of my time. GASP!

Apologies to those I may have just offended. I'm sorry; I guess I'm just an old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes, prose kind of gal. That's not to say I've never been moved by a poem or have no respect for poets. I have (!) and I do (!), but... well, you get my drift.

That said, here's some poetry! Or, as I prefer to call it, a nice piece of writing written by a poet. It can be considered a poem, a meditation, or even a letter. English majors can feel free to call it an apostrophe, which is a literary technique that addresses someone or something not physically present.

"Before the Heart, the Image" was written by Kristie Donahue to "an old, lost lover." Kristie is a writer and artist living in New York who, unlike me, prefers poetry to prose because she believes "there is a voice that lies underneath poetry that captivates [her]." After reading her piece below, please go visit Kristie's own blog at www.harttherapy.blogspot.com. 

Before the Heart, The Image 
By Kristie Donahue

     I am taking you here where I can see you. I guess if I could touch just one moment it might feel like a moment. There are so many things here that remind me that this is forever. Hands move where there should be rain, eyes drift and then there is cold air that should be your skin, my bones. You still walk around with your name. I still breath out every time you sneeze. I will not say that this is memory. When you stand the sun rises near sky, something fades naturally in my heart and I know how these images curl into the knot of night or how sleep moves from my skin and into your eyes. Most days I have forgotten my body or the season. The hour turns inside your voice, I don't want to listen. You say it anyway. You move through the story collecting pieces, loss, and there is always a wind. There is always a wind.

     I wanted to talk about Nebraska because without knowing how land rolls further than the eyes I could pretend that that is a kind of peace that carries memories from moments to silence. Maybe there I'll put my heart in the air. Everything transparent drifts, flowers somewhere and sky. You'll breathe in the aftertaste of fresh salts, the scent of the ocean on the skin. I'll say I came here because the the stars are new, because we begin at 35 or in the afternoon somewhere. It snowed over a lake but I don't know about it. The weather knows more than me. I think we were caught dreaming once. I don't walk down Lark Street. That was many years before and I'm still wearing the same socks. I think I gave my thoughts to a flower. I could never speak that way but dreams come close to knowing it is winter. The air is getting cooler and the nights are long. You don't know how it feels.

     When I look I see lips, face. The fingers part. The heart beats under the chest. There is no one here that leaves your memory. I am close to understanding. There is distance even as it loves and confuses, and then we talk about rain somewhere under the stars. I thought about something simpler like music. The long cello and then there is the walk away. I know my heart bleeds, breath and then I have not talked to anyone.

     Nothing here leaves without a shadow. Near that I know nothing exists without light. I have not seen myself. Some parts are never free, in the past, the invisible thread, by the mirror. I was not the girl with the hands, the heart, the story. You lean in and the the world turns, air spreads forgivingly, like it always does. I don't know, something carries, neither side without light. You were right. I can not lift the wind like a bird. Maybe that is why I am alive. You wanted a smile. Sometimes I only know I lost my mind to this. You have an opinion. I do not know enough to believe. I know light never sets. There was sky. The day faded and I slept.

     I can describe you. There are lips where your heart should be. You have another cheek and bone, same eyes, smell of green. Your room is summer without a scent, clear and undiscovered. You carry that sky with you all day around the sand, there is no sense of the ocean, just the sleepy lull of waves. I am here in February, my hands. I once thought a wish was rain. It moved today but that is how things speak I guess.  
     Every moment dreams drift the day. You are a word with a blanket around your body. I am lost in what you could be. I am lost in a piece of it. I should be leaving through my yesterdays, the wheels on the road without a key. You know I walked from here to March, the wind swept and the sun rose and slept that day like it does even when I am not there. I was wishing that time knew how the cells under the skin feel without the wind, without a home. Some things stay because they have not been born. We search only to figure tomorrow, the air there and the same breeze. You are still until just moments, your face in his. Your eyes are as they have always been. You bring with you more air, something found, a reason.

     The story is my opposite. Everyday I walk around like a stranger to the leaves. I do not want you to know where the mind sinks, how I put myself in every fiction, how I turn. There is only this space, the other body. We meet and part. I keep what is lost. There must be a name without Nebraska. I missed the crease of the sun and the cloud there. We see the body before it is found. We walk that way and never ask. I wonder. You have hands. Could you hold moments without everything in them? Could you just be your heart, the voice I have memorized, the sound that I don't know about?