Ashes of Candor

Fall 2007

You can chase me.

Through the ashes and the sunsets.

You can try and catch me.

But you won't.

You can tell me you love me.

You can fill me with candor and break me into pieces,

Set me aflame and watch my embers smolder into the night.

But you won't catch me.

 

You can tell me you're honest.

Feed me those lines other girls eat hungrily.

But I will spit them out and stare at them on your kitchen floor.

And you just look at me like I'm the actress you want to replace.

You could lay me out with one of those kisses,

The kind you reserve for the first night with a pretty girl,

You could envelope me with such affection but I wouldn't believe you.

I would grab my jacket and leave and you would stand there

and tell yourself that you can catch me but you can't.

 

You can chase me.

Through the rolling hills that I ran to to get away from you.

Yeah, you could follow the trail

of breadcrumbs and porn mags

cigarrette butts and crumpled up notebook poems

through parts of the forest where light only hits some of the leaves,

You would come this far only to stand in the midst of my perfume,

a mixture of laughter and lotus flowers,

and look down at the angry footsteps of such an unruly creature.

Yeah, you can chase me.

 

Reviews

[Stonewall]

Wow, great poem. For better or worse I get what you mean from both sides of the coin. This line struck me the most powerfully - "And you just look at me like I'm the actress you want to replace." How many people are mistakenly longing for someone, but only to play a role, and missing who others really are?