To Listen to Music While Reading this Poem, just Click Here!
Click Here To add this poem to your "Voting Possibilities" list!
Discussing Roberta My friend and I met for lunch at a posh and rustic hotel, known for its poshness and rusticity, and the subject of—well, let’s just call her Roberta—came up. “How do you see her?” my friend asked quizzically, touching her cloth napkin to her lips. “I mean,” she added, “really see her?” I took one last mincey out-in-public bite of ice-cold shrimp, and sighed, “Well, first and last, beautiful,” I said. “Willie’s crisp mountain mornings, and Buttermilk Skies, at the same moment, depending on the light.” We each took a sip of lemon-garnished water. I cleared my throat. “She was a tragic figure, in a way,” I went on, “in a way that made every woman want to be part of the tragedy. She wore it like fine lace. Her loneliness became a shrine that everyone ran to. My friend shifted uneasily in her chair as though she knew something I did not. “The eyes are what I remember from long ago. Dark, haunting, as though they had seen the future, but had to live through it anyway. All her inherited millions could neither save nor spare her. Losing her daughters like that on one, innocent, frozen-in-time afternoon. She knew it, you know, saw it coming, saw herself outliving everyone in her family.” Had I said something wrong? I asked myself. “LIke I said, first and last, beautiful.” My friend’s eyes had changed to an odd stare that looked past me. She made gestures to leave. “She wasn’t, you know. Beautiful I mean. She wasn’t.” |
Additional Notes:
This is a true story. I did not understand my friend's reaction then and I don't understand it now. I'm just re-telling the way I saw it unfold.
This Poem was Critiqued By: DeniMari Z. On Date: 2014-10-04 21:26:13
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
Great write - I love true to life poems that play out in lines inching away at the anticipation that comes next - I doubt anyone could have completely understood what she meant - it seems she saw something in Roberta that stood out and she was a bit obsessed over Roberta's personality or frightened by her -
Obviously she made a great impact on your friend - Why she didn't find her beautiful no one will ever know.
She must have been an "oddity" to your other friend which fully left her unable to comprehend her in a beautiful way -
loved this,
Deni