Cerulean Pages in a New Year

my love for art has been fouled
by the resurgence of you, imaginary being.
if i keep it quiet, like the old terrains of my soul,

i might have found that love was carried long ago.

i question your name with such a zeal,
caress your tears as if i could keep

who you once were told would grow.

hold them in my palms, as if they might stay.

only, we were kids then,

now forged into false adults.

i understand you may not behave,
forget who you were meant to be,
but in a new blue, i thought maybe and
just maybe, you’d be back to being you.

despondent at your manners,
ardently waiting for your answers,
i am hopeful, but you are callous.
you once were doting,

do you remember?
now your malice rags my bearing.

you claim to be unquenched,
scornful, spurned,
i am rejected by you,
and i rejected you by myself.

surrounded by ragged boughs,
i am steeped in poison.

breathing air that tastes wrong,

there is nothing i would crave more, 

than ripping the roots of our core, 

begging to be cleansed. 

new time, liquid cerulean

covered by the same haze, renamed.

open canvas, strokes of color.

pages waiting, never quite turning.

i am still here.

you were, once.

we resemble ourselves,

we never returned.

Laura Cremer ’29 (lauraperezcremer@college.harvard.edu)remains between pages (again).