Young Writers Society

oops

All English version:

It’s strange how this language becomes
clumsy between my fingers, how I search for
a pretty thing to say and stumble between
thoughts of nothing at all and thoughts
half in French.

Little words like the eyes roll off the tongue
in a way that "eyes" do not, caught in my teeth
on the harsh held vowels of the American accent--

listen to what I say, not how I say it;
even in two languages I cannot express myself
the way I would like to, and

my brain becomes more complicated,
doubling back on itself each passing day
until I become completely lost
between my languages and my desires and
you.



(tbh this wasn't the most intentional poem my brain just literally cannot handle thinking in two languages at once XD)

Someone fell off the cliff, today,
at Étretat.

There's something about a scandal
that draws the masses and so we flock
with the seagulls to watch the oddest bird,
striped yellow and orange,
hover and wheel and turn in the air.

And I am one of the watchers, I who
brought my long lens today for the first time,
can see through its magnifying powers
little bits of color moving on the beach.
Yellow, those are the urgentistes
(I can’t remember their name in English);
white as the chalky cliffs is the sheet—
they covered him with a sheet
as if he is dead already.

The fall must have been fast,
fast and soundless, for I was meters away
and I heard no cries. 
The fall fast but the aftermath much longer,
time limping along as the medics move around,
the helicopter circles, dives, circles again,
then welcomes the strangers under its strange wings
and turns again to the beach where cars wait,
and people, and such a painfully slow chain of events unfolds that I
tell myself it's time to go home;
that I feel certain they did not recover him
alive. 
There are no ambulance sirens. 

I pick my way down the cliffside—
little mountain goat, like my parents called me.
My feet are sure but my heart is unsteady,
imagining my camera slipping from my tensed fingers and
breaking open on the rocks below, spilling black metal bits like cassis.
In the blink of an eye, I imagine myself following after it,
a ricochet unchecked by roots or rocks,
silent. 

I hold my breath because when I first saw the cliffs,
I almost said, "I am so happy I could die"
but changed it to "cry" at the last second;
because I told my parents I would make it back alive,
because I'm travelling alone for a week and
talking with strangers and possibly
slipping, just a little, on sea-wet rocks
standing too close, almost, to the cliff’s edge. 

Been digging having all of the titles in French but I couldn’t think of anything fitting/comparable this time around