Sonnet 10
- Let us settle this feud about the heart,
- Of when it softly bleeds, and when it harks,
- And when it sings in sight of a new start,
- How fickle it shakes in momentous sparks.
- The bump, the quiver when two eyes first meet.
- The date, the laughter when two minds ensue.
- The sudden moment hearts together beat,
- Sedating time to chart a dream's preview.
- The dump, the disconnect, a dry long pain.
- The wait, a life that's better spent alone.
- Avoiding the next perpetual drain,
- Becomes the catalyst for hearts of stone.
- And though this fear can stifle your tried love,
- A hint of bliss enthralls the heart above.
Notes
A few friends have been asking me for my thoughts on their failed relationships, which typically prompts me to ask them a lot of questions they don't like to ask themselves. This ends up revealing a partial truth to whatever didn't work and I usually end up summarizing with something like "It doesn't work sometimes, and it sucks, but you can't dwell on the past and apply it to the future, you just need to take chances because something great could happen." Or something like the above sonnet.
This was written a few days after I moved to San Diego, where I grew up, away from Orange County, my not-really-home for about a year. The weather down here's been awkward lately, swaying from the start of a humid, hot summer to day-long, murky overcasts with slight drizzles. So I'm sitting at a Starbucks in La Jolla glancing out at the sky and people walking by with a pad and pen, and doing the sonnet thing like I used to: 14 lines of chicken scribbles on notepad paper. No thesauruses. No dictionaries. Just a lot of me iambing to myself and counting.
— Huy on