I must be getting sick or something of the sort, and I blame trying to go running the other day, which left me with a terrible cough and an itchy throat for a couple hours afterward. It’s a sign that I shouldn’t exercise. My attempt at running was pathetic considering I can dance four hours straight but can’t run for a tiny percent of that time.
Even though my attempts at exercising are pathetic, I did finish a poem today. I’ve been working on it for about a week starting from a random scribble in my notebook. Flipping through my notebook on a bus trip to Chicago, I was startled by it and wrote a note next to it.
Since high school, I have always worked well in crowded pretty noisy places, and now that I’m older and of drinking age, I do a fair amount of writing in bars along with the standard coffee shops. I really don’t mind it or people asking what I’m doing. When I write in iambic pentameter, I have to write out everything by hand and note all of the stresses, which uses a lot of paper, and I often get the question of what language I’m writing in. I guess it does look strange, and I suppose people are polite enough not to read what I’m writing to ask that question. I have heard from strangers that my handwriting looks neat but is impossible to read.
Lately, I’ve been writing sonnets, which is a little frustrating. I can’t stop it. Also, the blank verse lurks behind everything. I tried very hard to write a free verse poem (that was not a sonnet) but I decided to revise it into a sonnet. I think it’s much better. Reading it over later, I realized several of the lines were in iambic pentameter. Maybe I do need to get away.
Since the days are getting longer, sunlight fills my kitchen and living room in the afternoons and evenings, but instead of trying to read by the window, today I tried to take a nap because I haven’t been feeling well. I’ve been sneezing a lot. Maybe now I have allergies.
I really want to go an Amazon shopping spree, but I have been very good. I tried reserving books through the Ohio State library, but it wouldn’t work probably because I’m not a student until Spring Quarter. Maybe. It’s weird thinking that when I graduated, I didn’t really leave this city and this campus. I still took classes. It’s hard thinking about leaving. What do I want to do before I leave? I shouldn’t buy books because my friends would groan if they had to help me move all of them when I leave.
Late one night while writing at the bar, probably after work, I looked at a few scraps I had written, and after a week or so of work, it’s a sonnet. It’s not done, but it’s always hard writing about these things. The new blue dress. I’m not sure this is the right place for it. Is there ever a right place for it? People always say that you need to write it out. How can I? Writing it won’t get it out. Nothing will. I could put another memory in its place in this poem, but it’s the one that fits the best. I’ll probably never resolve this.
On the back of the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop shirt that I’m wearing (I only wear it around the house because it’s a little large) there’s a quote from Ernest Hemingway, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” For the poems I have been writing recently, I feel as though I crack open my heart (like an egg) and let everything inside it bleed into semi-intelligible words. I suppose that sounds melodramatic, but it’s in response to the Hemingway quote.
Tell me that there is something more to all this. Tell me love still exists.
Why did I do it? Because I’m selfish, and all I want in the world is this feeling that I can’t describe, something like predilection. Is that what I’m looking for? No. It doesn’t matter. It’s gone now. I knew this would happen. I have the memories, but are the memories enough? Isn’t this what I wanted?
