"I keep thinking about what it would be like if we trulymade names for ourselves–if we went..."

“I keep thinking about what it would be like if we truly

made names for ourselves–

if we went down in history as somebodies, instead

of soft, nervous girls with soft, nervous hands.

I think about the literary scholars, years after we’re dead,

combing through our work and seeing how

we keep borrowing each other’s favorite cliches,

how it’s impossible to mistake just who

we are talking about.

I keep wondering

if they’d see these poems as our love-letters:

if we would be like Hemingway and Mary Welsh,

like F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald,

if they would bind up our heartbreak

into its own book and sell it as romance.

This thing,

we kept it so close to our chests:

all at once, out in the open

and yet completely private.

What would those academic types think

about the way we put our wounds on display

like museum exhibits?

They tell you not to fall in love with a poet.

I always thought it was because

we’re too caught up in the language

to live in the moment.

I didn’t know it was because the aftershocks

would be written in ink.”

- LIKE F. SCOTT AND ZELDA by Ashe Vernon