2025-10-07: This poem was originally posted with the kind of explanation that goes through and names folk and goes into a lot of details. Too many for my taste, now. But also too few. Like a lot of blog posts I was making around this time, the conversation was pretty one sided. I have edited some details. Those who know, know. The "original" follows, though around 20% of the text is new. I have no idea precisely when I wrote the original introduction. Circa 2007-2008, I would guess. I would probably put a different spin on things if I wrote it now, but it works well enough with the tweaks I tweaked.
My relationship with Person A tended to a degree of weird. We met as somewhat outsider intellectuals at UAH, probably about year 2000 or 2001. I have no idea why we started talking, though I suppose it involved the Honor's Lounge: me wasting time one day and her in and open to a quick conversation.
There is always a chance that it could have ended like that, with the two of us meeting on occasion and talking for a while. For the next couple of years, that is pretty much exactly what transpired. The kind of near-friends who sometimes set aside time for one another and tend to say, "Hi!," in loud voices if passing near one another. Meaning it. Not needing more than that.
Sometime around May 2003, though, things were different. A new depth erupted out of the relationship. Things got complicated. I call that summer the Summer of Hell, and she was a part of it, both the good and the bad.
But that is past. And with her recent death, it will probably stay a weird part of the past.
I had not called Person A a friend for a couple years before her death, and I am sure it was the same for her. In that early part of that so-called Summer of Hell, she was close to being my best friend.
In fact, one of our last encounters that was not absolutely fraught with the implication of blame was her stopping by to give me a gift and talk about me being one of the first persons she felt comfortable saying she loved. Only I was gone on a volunteer trip for that week and I suppose it had never came up. In fact, I had left without telling a lot of people. She felt betrayed and in retrospect I understand. Though I also know there was reasons why I left. It was not A I was fleeing. It was mostly everything.
I wrote this poem in the Summer of Hell, a tribute to A. She always had trouble expressing how she felt to people, and often felt that people placed a particular ideal upon her and then judged the Her-that-Was for not being the Her-They-Wanted-to-See. This was me summing some things up.
She was ambivalent to the poem when she read it, and that's alright with me. She was not my poetry fan.
I am not your "I love you". I am not awake, sleeping beside you I hold your thoughts close but I am not YOUR Poem. I am unwritten, or something like that and I just want you cannot waves and sighs ecstacy in sea shells I am never oceans. I am never now. I am always this. I feel something deeper. just
I am not your "I love you" I am not your Half realized scent of dew on glass. I am not your Reason to live And I am not your death in cryptic eyes Nor lies lying In kissed breath with "hold me close and stare inthrough me". I am not your "I feel so far away". I am not your "keep going, it is right around the corner". I am not your "romantic walks on a beach and a sound like rivers Passionate waves and sighs ecstacy in sea shells Predominate". I am not your dawn Red and blue clouds long horizon I am not your twilight Red and blue clouds "why are you running?" I am never oceans. I am never now. I am always this. I feel something deeper. I am not your "I love you" I am not awake. I hold your thoughts close but I am not your Poem. I am unwritten, or something like that and I just want Something... you cannOt... I just