My Poetry
RELATIONSHIPS ARE COMPLICATED
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Author’s Foreword
“Relationships are complicated.” This was one of the most profound, simple truths realized in my early twenties. It was relayed to me one summer evening, by Rebecca, a girl a couple years my senior who worked in the same office as me for a short time in Albuquerque, N.M. We were hanging out together one night after work, engaged in typical girl-talk about the frustrations of getting along with members of the opposite sex.
Those three words, passed down to her from one of her friends, summed up the disappointing and complicated reality that I was beginning to experience: that waiting for and marrying your prince charming wasn’t the kind of fairytale-quality storybook adventure I had assumed as a young girl that it would be. In fact, none of my relationships into my twenties proved to operate like I thought they should: love at first sight, the chase and courtship, and falling in love and living happily ever after.
A friend of mine from college, Devienne Teeters, went through the same thing her freshman year:
Prince Charming
Prince Charming's just a mem'ry
a faded distant dream.
My fairytale ending
got lost somewhere it seems.
No knight in shining armor
atop a fiery steed
to slay dragons for my favor,
to sweep me off my feet.
A fantasy from childhood
has long since met its fate,
so if you're trying to be Prince Charming
you're just a little late.
The intense emotions I experienced through the ups and downs of the beginning of this journey were spilled out onto scrap pieces of paper—sometimes at 4 in the morning, sometimes at 1 in the afternoon—and later compiled into a poem diary that I started. This printing spans 10 years of relationships, from 1996 to 2006; ages 16 to 26.
Two of the longest poems were written during breakups, to describe the 2 most influential relationships I’ve had to-date. For those 2 poems, I primarily used the lyrics of songs running through my head at the time to describe how I was feeling. I love music, and when going through trying or emotional times, I have always been able to find renewed energy and healing through words and music.
I tried to stay true to the emotions I was feeling and searched myself to find the right words to put those emotions into text. It is my hope that you will find resonance with my words, and in doing so feel alive, and perhaps find comfort that you are not alone in the struggles of a complicated relationship.
CMC