After her perfume never went away I had to burn everything

by Kakera   Jan 5, 2014


2012-04-17 03:42 AM

You have new clothes
you've changed the colour of your hair
and your perfume

You have new friends
you've changed the nasty and killed the dread
and found a new distaste

It lingers
old photographs and lost promises,
without encumbering denial and numbness blocking

For you, the angel of death,
I blow a kiss with the wind
Promising a nuclear winter

I told everyone on the sidelines that,
"I will win her"
and own her

But no, fantasy gets strangled when reality shoots you in the head
I can't remember anything except your scent

You smelled of strawberries and red wine,
you left it on my sheets and clothes
I burned it all

Your smile cut right through my scalp
and blood dripped all over our old photographs
and I burned them all

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Latest Comments

  • 10 years ago

    by Midnight Sky

    Nicly done :)

  • 10 years ago

    by Saerelune

    I think there's a lot of potential in this poem. The title drew me in, I find it intriguing to find a mix of darkness and love within a poem, it reminds me of loving someone but hating that same person at the same time.

    To me the poem really starts getting some "spine" during the third stanza and after that. You've got a nice balance of light and dark, simplicity and eloquence. It's very clear where you stand during these stanzas.

    I am a little bit unsure about your first two stanzas, wondering if it could be written more succinctly? I think the first stanza would do by ommitting some of the "you's", the second stanza could use some more concrete imagery, because it's not clear what "finding a new distaste" means, but maybe that's just me.

    I liked your ending. The combination of strawberry and red wine I haven't read before. I also like that you repeat the burning, because I could imagine the persona of this poem starting to deteriorate as it reaches the ending of the poem. Repetition works to strenghten that feeling. Well done, keep writing.

    • 10 years ago

      by Kakera

      The first time I wrote this poem was around two years ago, and I think I have tried to re-write it five times ever since.

      I totally agree about the first two stanzas, but I've always been insanely conflicted about what I want to do with them.

      The poem itself was written in response to the crisis of a really, really bad break-up, and the heaviness of the conflict between loving and hating someone at the same time. It took over a year before I forgave both her, and myself, and found the tranquility that is still loving the memories and experiences it gave me.

      The poem itself is completely about that inner struggle. But in hindsight, since I don't have that conflict anymore and it being quite old, I can't really rewrite it anymore, and have to put up with it the way it is as it is.

      I think a lot of it is flawed to this day, but that both makes sense, and fits, I think, because flaws are what created it.

      "Finding a new distaste" was in itself both about me and her, and us trying to find the distaste, the nausea, in who we had become at that point, to wear it on our sleeves. But mostly, it was her getting past it faster than I, and me being bitter about it, getting a bad taste in my mouth by it. Her change happened faster than mine, she grew out of the fragments of our severed bond faster than I did, and I was never sure how I could properly put that into a single sentence, and I still don't really know.

      But yeah. Your analysis is very spot-on. I was, at the point of writing it, slowly breaking down, but still staying on the path of changing into someone else. It was tough, but it ended up being better for the both of us, and the "distaste" is since long gone, and because of that, refining the language of the poem is very hard for me at this point.

      I thank you dearly for your very in-depth comment by the way, and "the combination of strawberry and red wine" was one of the few traits that hasn't left my memory, because she did have that very specific scent.

      Again, thank you for your comment, it's really appreciated.

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