by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Poetry
by Angie Nguyen ’22
falling in love with someone you shouldn’t is like an ending is written before the beginning. you don’t listen to the bells, warning you of the heartbreak and the tears and the way the sparkle in his eyes dulls eventually because you’re so enraptured by the i-love-you’s and the morning kisses and the midnight adventures in his foreign car (a toyota is still foreign to me). we were only running on borrowed time.
how could i be selfish enough to lay claim on your eyes and their haunting depth—the way they changed with your moods. i never realized dark, brown eyes could hold so much feeling until i looked into yours. how could i think that a piece of your heart was reserved for me? that heart is as wild as a stallion, and i thought i’d harnessed you, put you into my stable. how could i even begin to think that laugh was meant for me and only me? you share your joy so effortlessly—i even envy you at times.
i know you said you were mine but that’s like trying to claim the oceans and its waves, the forest and its wolves. the way you move, the way you carry yourself, the way you think—it was never mine, always yours.
i always thought love meant surrender. but i’m so tired of trying to make myself a home in your amazon. i don’t want to be a colonizer of your lands. i cannot confuse breaking you with appreciating you.
but when you tell me you love me, when you kiss me and hold me, for a split second, in this wild world, you are mine.