LITERAL
Then and Now
i. Then
Once,
On a grassy knoll
Under the placid, white-lidded stars,
You suddenly whispered,
"Tell me what life is like."
And so I did.
Animatedly, I told you that
Life - solid, living, breathing life - is
Dulcet and diaphanous and sticky all at once;
A warm shade of violet,
Or perhaps a brilliant blue.
It insists on being savoured,
Sticking to the roof of your mouth
Like a gold-foil toffee,
Or the honeyed syllables of your favourite words.
Starry eyed, I maintained that
Life is an infinite, aurous dawn, illuminating
A thousand and one forked roads
With a thousand and two fairy-tale endings.
It's all in the pixie dust, I grinned,
Whilst committing to memory your honeysuckle smile.
ii. Now
Now,
I have come to see that instead,
Our existences are all cut from the same cosmic fabric.
Life is really all about losing ourselves
In the snap-crackle of radio static,
Our voices swallowed whole
By the clangor of freshly minted coins.
It's about being ensconced in the soft amnesia of sorrow
At one thirty-six a.m. in the morning,
Trying to glut our hollow souls
With thinly brewed coffee.
I also see that
It's all about us being smeared across the universe
With the same crayon -
An insipid shade of cosmic latte,
Not white, not quite beige,
But instead something that's far too in between.
That there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow;
No sprightly leprechauns clicking their heels
At the corners of our eyes.
