I don't know how I gave birth to those poems
which I look back on
and read now with much fascination
much wonder
as though I were a third party foolishly believing
she/ he
and the character were the same person
suffering the same afflictions
let down by the same god
must have had the same failure for parents

and that
she/ he
the character
and the author
were the same
one person

Perhaps I never said this
and I probably might not have even believed it then
but the first decade of this millennium



was the most romantic
nothing could have been more painfully romantic than the whole decade had ever been

or perhaps I'm just one of those people who believe,
who in the manner of the aging,
youth will always be
beautiful