"Giving Up On You" and Self-Indulgence

I wrote this poem when I still lived in Virginia, when my last name was Devoto and before I was a working writer. Someone was apparently looking for it via Google, so I thought I'd help out whoever it was by posting it. For the record, it was about a guy I met my first day of college who ended up being a very good friend (and is to this day. Yes, he's read it.)

I wrote it for a poetry class, I think.

It used to have quotes from people I was friends with in college before each section, but I removed them because I'm not friends with some of them anymore and I would feel bad using their words.

Giving Up On You

I

You were best surprise since Natasha rose

like an adolescent Venus de Milo from

the weather-stained cardboard box that we stole,

the greatest surprise, a thirteenth birthday present,

an old friend who I never saw again

after that last, perfect party.

I haven’t, will never see enough of you

to know if freckles make a map across your skin,

but the blowback punch of tumbledown love

I never expected to have for someone

who doesn’t crave the ocean, who makes me

imagine bright summer colors melted

to a grey, shapeless mush—but it’s already

like first kisses, slippery and sweet,

much too late to turn back and hope

for something like a moment where I take

your hand in mine and there’s no more

lemonade or Texas sunsets—

just simple days, easy as waves in the desert;

that kind of thing never happens here,

it just jumbles up and twists

until I don't have your hands or

your mouth or your rainwet hair

sliding around my fingers.

II

The best thing is how he surprises me;

I’ve been able to guess the climax

of most books since I was six and friends

have always given the same advice,

wrapped it up in a different colored bow

and called it new

but I’m never quite sure what words

will slip past his lips to make me laugh.

Once I could have waited for him,

like the first, how I spent years outside

his body, patient, hands clasped in my lap,

head bowed like a lady

or the year I spent with the second while he

hesitated on the last step to a life

I’ll never want

but things are more urgent now

and when you smile at me they

swell up under my skin, weave

through the veins and harden

like spun-sugar crystals that grow

on top of sticky red blood cells,

feed off the live, dark fluid that

rushes, open and fast

back up, up, up, wraps us in

nerves, exposed and hot as lightning

that twist and sparkle at the edges

until I can’t see the beauty in that either.

III

Nothing should end this way;

if I did touch you, I know it’d be emptier

than drywall, flatter than

all the hammered copper my grandmother weaved

to make necklaces when I was still young enough

to skip through her gardens and shiver

at the too-sweet smell of flowers.

I convince myself like this:

first law of physics is that

nothing can be created

nothing can be destroyed

because energy is a constant transfer

and if this fades it goes

down, down, down:

a memory, a dead memory, fish that float

in the Baltimore harbor, belly-up scales

whiter than your hands and if I see

your face in the gentle weave of

dead trout and trash then you’ll

finally understand how powerless I really am,

how you can sit there, say lovely, pointless things,

buy me chicken sandwiches and we’re still

going to die like fish or birds or little sisters

which is why sex was once like flying hot and

slick and hairpin turns that didn’t disguise

the six feet of dirt that waited at the end of the bed.

I’ve let my hair grow long again;

your eyes remind me of a nearly vanished forest

and at night I fall through the endless black sky,

never reach to catch myself in the

decayed branches that spiral up to kiss

the almost-burned out stars.

March 2008

I read through some of my old poetry when I retrieved this and I've come to a startling conclusion:

My poetry was TERRIBLE.

It's not that I ever thought I was amazing. I mean, I wasn't even close to being the best in any of my poetry classes--but I didn't realize just how insipid everything I wrote was. Embarrassing. It was more self-indulgent and sugary than all the forced similes in the world.

I loved writing it, though; it was so much fun. I loved going to class and hearing people read. It was hard for me to give feedback, because poetry seems like such a personal thing and who am I to say what's well done or not?

Poetry for me was self-centered. I always wrote about myself, my problems, my life. Working as a writer since leaving graduate school has taught me a lot about writing outside myself. Profiles, advertising and manual updates aren't interested in a boy I had feelings for when I was 19 or a walk I took. (If they are, then I'm doing it wrong.) I suspect that's why it's difficult for me to write poetry now. Novels are much easier because those aren't about me either. They're stories. They're other than me.

I'm not sure I know how to write poetry that isn't focused on my experience. Directly, expressly focused.

Plus, I'm so happy and well-adjusted now that it wouldn't really be the same anyway. Does anyone really want to read a poem about a girl who has the job she always wanted, is married to a man she loves absolutely, has the most incredible friends in the world (and a best friend who's pregnant with her first daughter!) and a family that really loves her? I suspect not.

Besides, that's something else I still haven't figured out how to write.

I'm okay with that.