i was waiting

these days in my free alone time (mostly walking or on the bus/metro) i do one of two things:

- i re-analyze (remember, reminisce about) my former couple relationships. i don't know why this is so fascinating, given that i've already lived through them, and in no way am i imagining i've learned, or am trying to learn valuable life lessons from them. right now i'm rereading my old diaries (in the metro; i know). maybe for better closure, maybe with a tinge of schadenfreude. at some point i was really interested, as in "will this girl make it, or won't she?"
spoiler alert: so far so good.

- i think about poetry. partly because i've been stalling for a while writing on multiple bad poems, so something is bound to just pop up any minute. but also going through a collection by Pat Lowther, "time capsule" (thank you S. for the kind thought!)

So here's a near-perfect crystallization of these two strands, in someone else's words:

 PENELOPES -3. by Pat Lowther

 When I was Penelope
    I lived
    for the one gold day
    in a winter's rain
    unravelled every night
    what I learned of pain

I searched for the faces of friends and lovers
   on buses
                in the street crowd
secretly
   I was proud
   I could make one
   fat drop of sun
         burst its warm juices on my head.

So prized and lovely that,
   it could sustain
   my work of slyly tearing, thread by thread
   what I had learned

of enemies
      and the heart's maze
            and the demon-perilled journey between
first            and second thought