Thirteen am and we’re gliding. The streets love us now.
Look at me! I stood over them all,
Bow to me…I love you.
I see you encompassed by your smoke,
It trails through your hair; jaw not scalp.
Primary colours to flag me of your whereabouts,
You felt so close to being mine.
Fifteen and we’re almost there.
You cannot wait, rambunctious, it thrills me,
It goes to my head.
I was mistaken; the power was not mine to keep. (Was it even in my hand at all?)
We’re home. Home? Get in, I want to see you.
By my breast, I can feel the yearning,
But is it mine or yours?
Seven.Teen. There is no we’re. Just I, just you.
You tied my soul up in knots, tight and unforgiving.
No-one saw, not even she who came in. Her eyes glazed over. (Did your spell go that far?)
Incantations. That’s what they were. I say this to ease my heart.
It hurt me. And everybody saw.
I didn’t let them see the sap though,
No, nobody saw that.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
There's an urgency inn this poem which is dramatically apparent in the way it keeps us aware of the speaker's age at each stage of experience. I love at the very beginning the line: THE STREETS LOVE US NOW. It shows how full of joy and anticipation of more joy the speaker is. Of course, it's not the streets that are in love: the speaker is, but her interior happiness overflows any normal limit and makes the world itself joyous. I paused after that first stanza because I could already feel this happiness would not last, because the emotion that supported it would prove inadequate.The second stanza expresses the arousal of love when things spin out of control as they are meant too. The ancient Greeks said Aphrodite was the goddess who loosens and thus frees. But in the last stanzas things fall apart, there's no center to hold them together as you reveal in the line: