1 poem

by Melia Lenkner

Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School

Love Song, Second Draft

after Sylvia Plath

In a revision of our story, you still get your undercut bleached, but you never regret it, and I
still get my braces off the week before ninth grade (thank God) but I never shut
you out, because I’ve self-reflected, done the work, corrected both my teeth and my
attitude. You still have an awkward makeup phase, adorn the jagged outline of your eyes
with learning curves instead of wings, but this time I don’t judge you for it, and
we don’t swallow our feelings so frequently and never spit them out in spats at all.
In a second draft, we still go on a coffee shop date for our anniversary, the
first anniversary, but we don’t go as strangers to each other, and the world
is still too much for me, but you never are. We still spend that afternoon dodging raindrops
and clasping clammy hands together; together, this time, we drown the blame and leave it dead.