this field

you can have the whole of me in this field:
i pressed my soul into its loins
and beads of sweat still glisten
on the body learning to tango
in the outpour of rain.

i will surrender only here
so take care not to move even a strand of hair
from beneath the tree where i will lay through my whole life,
as if dying prematurely,
for this is home and i forbid you.

a day will come when spring will open me enough
for sun to shine
into the roots of the old cambridge tree
and open up
the rest of me.

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i’ve been writing this poem for a while now and it feels forever unfinished. maybe that’s just me, always a word out, a syllable in. and then i give up and start something else. at the end of the day, however, i always come back to this. and the oldest tree in cambridge.

18. his arrogance will be the death of us

the weekend sweeps me off my feet like you never could.
still, you do it better than X.
he’s been on my mind persistently for the last few days. not because i miss him: no, i’m glad we don’t see each other much. but rather because his presumtion of his own greatness is driving me insane. take for example yesterday – just to prove his superiority over the poor old me, he went and asked all his friends whether they thought he was better than me.
i think you can guess the result.

but, hey, for some reason i didn’t care.
it didn’t upset me at all, but it did make me wonder why he was doing all that. is that his way of trying to retain me in his arms? i don’t think he realises that i never was in his arms and god forbid i ever will be.
he is my project first and my boyfriend second.
not even a close second at that.   

that may sound ruthless, but believe me, it ain’t so. i’m only trying to help him, prepare him for the future. at the beginning i thought we could work, but then he disappointed and i thought i’d be a clever idea to try to “improve” him.
just for the hell of it.
i always wanted to “improve” someone – make them appreciate the arts more, motivate them to study harder, show them what it’s like to see perfection so close up, but i realise now that this process requires you to genuinely care for the person and now i’m not sure whether i care any more.

his arrogance will be the death of us.

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“The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.” – Friedrich Nietzsche