Poetry by Annick Yerem

Crazy Mary

after a song by Victoria Williams

You were the boy who sang. You were the boy who sent me sandpaper and Beware of the dog signs, notes scrawled on the back, the one who serenaded me out of concerts, the one who asked me to come to him, almost a world away.

I was the girl who loved words and was scared of flying and who crossed an ocean to get to you. 

This is not a love story.

We had sex the first night, distant and friendly and never again, the kind where you truly don`t have to, but you think you do, and then we lay there, the noise of the city at night, the sirens, the strangeness of it all and you held my hand and gave me earplugs and told me how small we all were compared to the Universe and how much you loved that.

New York was everything I hoped for. It smelled of November and Banana Muffins and exhaust fumes, it was dirty and dazzling, it was surreal and scary and the glittering Manhattan skyline, seen from the Staten Island Ferry in the dark, made me weep.

You brought me pasta salad from the late-night-diner at the corner of East Street. There was music everywhere, it felt like a movie set. You introduced me to your friends, some of whom were on album covers I had at home, but I imagined myself as the leading lady, calm and collected, mysterious as hell, singing Lemonheads songs quietly in my head.

You played me Victoria Williams and I listened, I listened.

When you went on tour, I stayed in your apartment, Jeff Buckley sang on your answering machine, three years later he would die before I ever met him, but you`d still be there, you and Victoria.

I reminded you of Amélie, you said, but I was my own gnome, I was wild-eyed, crazy Mary, travelling to strange lands where I could read the signs but didn`t get the message until years later:

that the world was there, in all its dismay and beauty, waiting for me to embrace the sadness and to love it back.
​

Annick Yerem lives and works in Berlin. In her dreams, she can swim like a manatee. Annick tweets @missyerem and has, to her utmost delight, been published by Pendemic, Detritus, @publicpoetry, RiverMouthReview, #PoetRhy, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rejection Letters and Dreich. https://linktr.ee/annickyerem

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