this probably shouldn't have been a sestina, but that's how i wanted it. deal.


a name that starts with more

i can't remember exactly when it was. it is a
hazy spot in my memory--like a name
without a face, if you will. i do know that
the story i want to tell you starts
in a rundown treehouse by a river, with
a boy and a girl balanced precariously--more

friends now than lovers, but getting more
and more comfortable with the idea of a
life spent together; of a world filled with
less than threes, where each has a secret name
for the other. the story starts
with the girl and the boy knowing that

the boy wants the girl, but before the girl knows that
she wants him too. she grows more
sure of herself--slowly, the way a flower starts
to bend toward the sun--the longer they lie there, a
pair of lazy kids draped in a tree. his name
is on her mind all the rest of the day. with

no certainty still, she resolves to spend more time with
him--more quiet summer afternoons that
neither wants to end. gradually, his name
becomes all it takes to get her to smile. the more
she talks to him, the more she realizes that not a
single person has ever understood her as he does. she starts

feeling prickly and warm when he's near. something starts
one night--some new beauty--when in a hammock with
him under a starlit sky she breathes deeply and tells him a
secret: "i like you." and right then--right in that
moment--she suddenly feels happier and more
alive than ever before. he whispers her name,

his smile shaming the stars. she thinks her name
belongs on his lips, and she starts
to almost cry. but what she wants to do more
is to bury her face in his chest, and she does. with
one hand he strokes her hair; she says his name...and that
is where my story ends: with two hearts now one, and a--

--a name
that starts
with "more"





Poetry by protean
Read 683 times
Written on 2010-06-03 at 07:08

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