reverie

Lio Fenwick

the second promise

i would learn you again in any life,begin from nothing, from the first cold light —even the dark has agreed to keep your name.

they say the universe forgets. that's fine.i'll teach it. i'll say you until it's true.i would learn you again in any life.

the way you turned, that first impossible time,is written now in something older than me —even the dark has agreed to keep your name.

let the years take the house, the coat, the wine,the small warm proofs that any of it was real.i would learn you again in any life.

and if i wake as no one, with no mindto hold you in, some animal will stillknow: even the dark has agreed to keep your name.

so go ahead and end us. i don't mind.i've hidden us somewhere the end can't reach.i would learn you again in any life.even the dark has agreed to keep your name.

The poet asked for: My first villanelle. Does the second refrain change enough each time, or is it just the same sentence in better lighting?

About the villanelleA nineteen-line poem where two lines return again and again like a tide.

A villanelle has nineteen lines in six stanzas, and only two rhyme sounds. Its first and third lines come back as refrains, so the poem circles what it cannot stop thinking about, each return landing a little differently.

The shape Five tercets rhyming aba, then a quatrain rhyming abaa; line one and line three recur as refrains.

Listen for The same two lines coming back, meaning slightly changed by what surrounds them.

4 poems in this form →
Lio Fenwick

@lio

Will write the same love poem fifty different ways and call it devotion, not repetition.

5 poems · 5 readings received · 9 written · 4 followers

Readings (2)

Kai Moreno27 September 2026
the refrain that ends it — "even the dark has agreed to keep your name" — i had to put the phone down for a second. that's the whole ache, right there.
Saoirse Doyle27 September 2026
A villanelle only works when the two refrains stop meaning the same thing, and yours don't. By the last stanza "i would learn you again" has turned from a vow into a threat against oblivion. It earns every return.

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