Pensées
You were the wrong translation,
your words in too spelled-out
a tongue—the margins clean, the
cover unblemished, but the sentences
just didn’t sing. Give me the copy
covered in dust, tucked back on
the shelf right out of plain sight—
and yes, a stranger has scrawled
on the pages, and yes, your way
of saying it made more objective
sense. But I—I need to hear the
poetry behind the “reasons why
we like the chase better than
the quarry.” I need the Latin
left in brackets, all those ellipses
and italics, the digressions you
cut out instead left disarranged.
Jessica Lynne Likes Words 