Do you remember?

~ Purpleanais

image

Do you remember?
I used to wear candy pink for a dare, play the part of the prom queen for a day.
You never took ice in your drink, you liked to drop obscure hints.
We thought we’d be forever linked.

We lit innocent hearts plucked from unlucky bystanders, kindling in our palms we’d quickly discard and throw on the bonfire.

With the tip of our fingers we’d pick up the smouldering embers, watch them slowly die, and
laugh with the cruelty of youth… that has no regard for consequence & can’t comprehend the pain of absence.

There was so much love still to drink and no one had yet clipped our wings.

Do you remember?
We looked for art everywhere, prized intellect and quoted Voltaire, performed pirouettes, pretended to be the precious heir in a play by Molière.
Who did we think we were, all attitude and complicated words.
We thought we were deliciously sarcastic, delightfully ironic, we were – really – pathetic kids verging on the moronic, with impossible standards and a bad case of folie des grandeurs.

Do you remember?

As the violins cried behind the hills, we tried to imbue the bartender with the charm of Michelangelo’s David, but even the power of wishful thinking has its limits and we were left with nothing, not even a pale copy, not even an apprentice’s underdrawing, because the bartender, far cleverer than we were, had scampered with our tenners.

We made our memories and tore them into strips, scattered them to the wind, unable to believe that one day we’d want them back, if not intact then at least some kind of scrap.

Do you remember…
My purple eyeliner left streaks over my face. We still had to learn nobody ever wins this particular race, and that the best you can hope for is to reach the end with some kind of grace.

Image credit: my own

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72 thoughts on “Do you remember?”

  1. Nathalie…this is really great! It churned up a lot of old carefree emotions in me. I guess we all go through that. Love’s freedom, one day shattered. Begging to forget but wanting to remember way later down the line. ❤

    Liked by 1 person

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      5. i did actually read the piece and my thought was, “Who actually quotes Voltaire spontaneously?”. I would rather quote Keats or Whitman or Blake or Lord Byron. Voltaire is way too dark for me.

        Liked by 1 person

      6. Ha, I think people who quote Voltaire spontaneously are almost always French, and probably going through a political phase 😉
        I still do quote Voltaire, very occasionally, but I’m with you on Keats, Blake and Byron.

        Like

  10. Nathalie, this is poetic pureness at heart.

    Your picture and your words are opening up, consciousness & creativity to a whole new level. 🙂

    Beautifully well written poem. My favorite of yours. 🙂

    P.S 2 weeks ago I released my first book of poetry. I wanted to surprise you. There are 2 blogs I posted. One is about making the book and the recent one is a reblog of my Canadian friend who wrote a book review of my book. 🙂

    If you get a chance please check it out. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  14. Pretty in pink, ooh la la! 😉
    What a lovely, soul-baring piece. I think that anyone who reads this will be reminded of their own heady days of first-love delirium. Once again, you’ve brought us along on a personal, heartful journey with beautiful words and emotion.

    Liked by 1 person

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  16. An idiot once said memories and the past have no place in fiction and writing. Your work blows that shit out of the water. It really gets me mad when people harp on about the negativity of looking back and how being whimsical, reminis or reflect back on things, you’re somehow not ‘moving forward’ what a load of New Age Drivel that is! The best work ALWAYS has the past in it. Some of that new fangled yoga in your mouth claptrap really drives me crazy, I have long loved writers who were not afraid to REVEAL THEMSELVES (and how can you do this if you obviate the past entirely!? eh? eh?) as well as bringing up memories we can all in different ways relate to and of course, last but not least, not apologize for being philosophical. If they want to call us navel gazers (to me this is an entirely different thing and usually done when blot O) so be it but really what it is, is they don’t UNDERSTAND A DAMN THING. Fortunately you do which is probably one of many reasons I read you and read you again and again. Oh and for the record, I’m wearing a My Little Pony pink tshirt and you would have beaten me up at school but then we would have become best friends over favorite books and banned chocolates. (beautiful picture)

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    1. Agreed! Anybody who says you shouldn’t write about the past can kiss my arse, I won’t have anybody tell me what I can and can’t write anyway, but on top of it, it’s such a lot of bollocks. There seems to be this ‘thing’ where looking back is negative, not progress, etc…I’m sorry but nobody would be who they are without the effing past, nobody can truly know and understand themselves without looking back and pondering on things. There is a MASSIVE difference between thinking of and understanding the past and navel gazing. Why the fuck do people study History (I’m a big history buff) if it’s not about the desire to understand where we come from, how and why? It’s about knowledge!
      Oh, and I’m wearing a Sesame Street purple t-shirt right now, I would never have beaten you up at school unless you’d started some real shit, never would I have done such a thing for the crime of wearing pink, I would have tried to show you the error of your ways instead, taken you under my wing as the girl who badly needed style advice. 😂
      But yeah, we would definitely have bonded over books and chocolates 😉

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. and yesterday i was wearing a My Little Pony tshirt so it’s pretty obvious to me we are literally cut from the same cloth! Oh I couldn’t agree more. I actually loathe the phrase navel-gazing as most people use it as a side-ways-insult and they can fuck off because let’s see what they write? Oh How To Heal Your Life and all that happy shit? mmm how’s that working for ya? 😉

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Oh, yes. I think I’m going to come back though, it’s been almost a week…I made my point, to myself and nobody else (lol) but that’s what counts. I do think Milo has gone all big headed and narcissistic like…some of the things he says are outrageous BUT the way Twitter has ‘punished’ him in the past to finally ban him like they did is just too appalling. There should be no bias on a social media platform, like there should be no bias in journalism and so on. I have a big problem with PC and trying to shut people up, I have a problem with that “playing the victim” mentality, I hate “fashionable causes” dominating the rest of the news. I do believe there can be no progress if there is no debate, and debate should be done with the people who disagree with you because, otherwise, what’s the point?!
        Sorry, I’ve gone on a rant again lol

        Like

      3. Rant away. Free speech with conditions isn’t free speech.

        And it’s paramount for one glaringly simple reason; there are many places around the world where people who speak their minds suffer a fate far worse than being offended.

        Liked by 1 person

  18. I love this. It reminds me of the reckless, carefree, innocence of youth when the whole world rests in the palm of our hands, when we are the masters of the universe. Then we grow up. The last lines are stunning. Beautifully written ❤

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  20. I bloody love your words! Such a lament for what seemed everlasting back in the day. I love this one, I really do. You have more style about your words than a lot of writers and I doubt there will be a reader who isn’t moved by this.

    Liked by 1 person

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      1. When you write, you condense down feelings and images that lesser writers would take paragraphs to convey. That you make your pieces so raw and real has the benefit of allowing us to feel and to agree with the visceral emotions. Frame away my friend, it wouldn’t be the first time I was framed but my lawyer told me not to mention that again lol.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. You know, I’m so SO pleased you said this because I like to think my main strength as a writer is the ability to convey emotion…so, you’ve pretty much made my day…night, actually 😉
        Ps: it’s okay, your lawyer doesn’t need to be involved in this particular frame-up 😂

        Liked by 1 person

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