We loved across a thousand milesand two unhelpful zones —my morning was your given-up,my midnight was your dawn.
I learned to want you on a screen,to memorize a pixel face,to hold a phone against my chestas if it kept your place.
They say that isn't really love,that love is in the room.But I have kissed a lit-up glassat four a.m. in gloom
and meant it more than half the menwho had me within reach.Distance is only geography.The wanting has no speech
for miles. So when at last you came,and stood, and were not lightbut weight and cold and travelled coat —I did not sleep that night.
I lay and listened to you breathethe way you never couldthree thousand miles and one bad lineaway, for all our good.
The poet asked for: The turn I'm unsure of is the last stanza — does letting her finally just listen to him breathe land, or is it too soft an ending after the argument the poem's been having?
About the balladA poem that tells a story in short, songlike stanzas.
A ballad tells a story, often a dramatic one, in a songlike voice. Many ballads repeat a line or phrase and move quickly from event to event. The stanzas are short, so the story keeps moving.
The shape The traditional ballad stanza is four lines, alternating four and three beats, with lines two and four rhyming.
Listen for A story unfolding, repeated lines, and a rhythm you could almost sing.
2 poems in this form →@saoirse
Elegies for things that don't usually get one: a coat, an answering machine, a mill.
6 poems · 7 readings received · 9 written · 4 followers
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