#love poetry
(Another romantic poem! And a famous one too, especially the first stanza.)
Dwelling Upstream
By Li Zhiyi (Song dynasty, early 12th century)
My dwelling is upstream,
And yours, downstream.
I think of you daily and yet my eyes don’t find your lovely image,
Though we drink from the same river (1).
The surging waters do not stop,
My bitter pining cannot cease.
I only hope our thoughts agree and we’re of the same mind,
Lest this longing be in vain.
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Notes:
- River: the river is this poem is the Yangtze River ( 長江) .
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Original Text (Traditional Chinese):
《卜算子•我住長江頭》
[宋] 李之儀
我住長江頭，君住長江尾。
日日思君不見君，共飲長江水。
此水幾時休，此恨何時已。
只願君心似我心，定不負相思意。
I was thinking of a word;
it sat on the tip of my tongue and yet I refused to share it.
Refused to let it fall out of my mouth like
semi melted butter would slide across bread…
A kind of gliding that I am not yet good at.
I was thinking a thought.
A thought that quickly made me feel something warm.
I could feel it hot against my skin; red scattering across my cheeks
like a mask that I had no choice but to wear.
You didn’t notice. Wrapped up in your own thoughts, I’m sure.
Like the way you wrap your fingers around a glass of whiskey; tight.
I had started to write about the word.
The word that we both held in the caverns of our throats; in the dark.
Shadowed against burning fires that were extravagant but didn’t keep us warm enough.
The word tried to keep us warm.
The word created actions that we couldn’t help but act out;
jumping into rivers without thinking twice about drowning.
I think the word made us love each other.
There are so many things that happen due to this one little word.
This one word that we can’t help but fall into.
This one word that we feel belongs in our everyday blood stream.
I whisper the word under my breath just barely and wonder if you hear it;
wonder if you heard it, if you would react…
Would you reach out and try to hold something real?
Peel back the layers that I’ve held deep under the surfaces of flesh and bone?
I wonder what an utterance of the word would bring into existence…
Would it bring about love? Hatred? Anger? Denial? Sadness?
I close my eyes tight and I whisper into the room full of echos;
into the chambers of the life we live…
Disguised.
Did you hear me?
I keep being reminded.
Keep seeing myself in your eyes;
the reflection of myself creating a new feeling.
You whisper in my ear and I let it linger.
I let you walk away and find myself huddled alone
in the corner, memorizing the words of another new
language happily [being alone]. I scribble into
journals and decide it’s good enough
to feel it and then let it out.
I find ways to distract myself and
empty the over kill into
pots and pans that I eventually
throw out [stop holding on].
Reminding myself that self pity is
trash and I don’t need
it to acknowledge the pain.
I don’t need you to see it for me
to heal it but you do see it.
You tell me all the time not to be
shy but I don’t know if I’m shy or just full of shame.
I push through the feeling of dying to share
what I keep in the part of my ribcage I never
let you touch and you hold me. You reward me
with the thing you don’t even label as “reward” but
I would do anything to feel your love heavy against
my skin so I keep breathing, pushing, trying, crying,
dying, falling apart in front of you,
vulnerability eating
me alive right before your eyes, smiling…
You keep reminding me… It’s okay to want to be alive
even if it feels like everything could be dead inside.
ReBecca DeFazio
More Than A Flower
Recording moments:
2:34 a.m. July 19th, 2020
He falls asleep while I play with his hair
after he tells me my bare skin is cold and
wraps me up in his arms. Radiating warmth;
I wonder if it’s just the way he makes me
feel. He stares into my eyes until he can’t
fight it anymore and I kiss his lips gently
before untangling my fingers and soaking
up all the safety he offers before falling asleep.
It feels like a dream before the dreaming
even begins… It’s one of my favorite feelings.
ReBecca DeFazio
More Than A Flower
I wanna talk about the way you touch me
when you’re not paying too much attention;
when your fingertips brush across my skin
quickly and gently, almost as if it didn’t
happen at all. Those moments leave me
feeling breathless; craving for more. When
you find yourself lost in the coffee that swirls
in my eyes, butterflies don’t just flutter in my
stomach, they sing. Bringing flowers to bloom.
I hear them talking in the depths of my soul;
chattering on about how you’re the one and I swoon.
Melting into the river of emotions I can never seem
to dry out; I flow through so quickly that
I’ve lost my breath all over again and…
It. Feels. So. Good.
ReBecca DeFazio
More Than A Flower
