Kiran Park
tithonus vs. the streetlight outside my window
tithonus was cursed to live, but i know how it ends all the way through
and i have decided it is enough to be a soul in a forgiving body
and nothing more. i only mean to say that i am no longer trying to write my life
into something astonishing, and there is no astonishing way to say so.
i’ve nearly run out of things to romanticize besides the hoping. and
the feeling of the rain, of course. and the waking in the mornings
and the sleeping in the evenings and the eating of ripe fruit and the
kissing of the sky and the knowing how it ends all the way through,
of course. these are the softest of days, when a streetlight in the snow
makes me want to write poems about love and i am content with all the living
laid out in a glistening array between here and that quiet limit of the world.
if there was some great enduring secret this would be it. i would take back
everything i have ever whispered just to tell it to you. my lips to your ear
and all the living laid out between. i only mean to say that i am not really
some river or prayer but instead just some flesh and clumsy bone
and a mouth that is not really full of words or something equally immortal
but instead just some space that i want you to find. there is no pretty way to say that
i know how it ends all the way through or to recognize that old ache of want
when even a streetlight in the snow can find its way into a love poem.
there is still something sacred about bathing in the glow of these ordinary things,
i think. tithonus was the worst of the world. this streetlight could be the best.
hold me between these soft bows of light, to the low hum of life
and the spin of the earth. i only mean to say
that we could make it so.
and i have decided it is enough to be a soul in a forgiving body
and nothing more. i only mean to say that i am no longer trying to write my life
into something astonishing, and there is no astonishing way to say so.
i’ve nearly run out of things to romanticize besides the hoping. and
the feeling of the rain, of course. and the waking in the mornings
and the sleeping in the evenings and the eating of ripe fruit and the
kissing of the sky and the knowing how it ends all the way through,
of course. these are the softest of days, when a streetlight in the snow
makes me want to write poems about love and i am content with all the living
laid out in a glistening array between here and that quiet limit of the world.
if there was some great enduring secret this would be it. i would take back
everything i have ever whispered just to tell it to you. my lips to your ear
and all the living laid out between. i only mean to say that i am not really
some river or prayer but instead just some flesh and clumsy bone
and a mouth that is not really full of words or something equally immortal
but instead just some space that i want you to find. there is no pretty way to say that
i know how it ends all the way through or to recognize that old ache of want
when even a streetlight in the snow can find its way into a love poem.
there is still something sacred about bathing in the glow of these ordinary things,
i think. tithonus was the worst of the world. this streetlight could be the best.
hold me between these soft bows of light, to the low hum of life
and the spin of the earth. i only mean to say
that we could make it so.
Biography
Kiran Park (she/her) is a junior in high school and a Korean-American poet with work in Interstellar Literary Review and Pollux Journal. You can find her on Instagram at @kiran.lpark.
