September Love
Also by Lang Leav
Fiction
Sad Girls
Poemsia
Poetry
Love & Misadventure
Lullabies
Memories
The Universe of Us
Sea of Strangers
Love Looks Pretty on You
September Love
copyright © 2020 by Lang Leav. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
Andrews McMeel Publishing
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ISBN: 978-1-5248-6787-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020942677
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For Michael,
my September Love.
Foreword by Lili Reinhart
I believe we read poetry to connect to the world around us. I would argue that the most important and valuable aspect of life is human connection. My love of poetry blossomed when I was sixteen as I started reading poems as a form of therapy. I remember discovering Lang’s work on Tumblr, where I constantly scoured the site in search of love poems to send to my long-distance boyfriend at the time. Her delicate, soft font first caught my eye, but it was the beauty and depth that Lang created with such few words that had the greatest influence on me.
Sharing your poetry with the world is comparable to opening up your journal, full of your deepest vulnerabilities and desires, and allowing the world to read. As a writer myself, I have a deep appreciation for my fellow poets who share the words that stem from their open hearts. It is a raw and humbling experience, and Lang was kind enough to reach out to me with support and encouragement when I announced the publication of my first collection.
Lang’s words seem as if they are individually plucked with precision and purpose, thoughtfully portraying a picture that lives inside her mind. She looks back on her own emotions and experiences with such clarity, and you can see her deep appreciation for the ability to feel so profoundly. Writing poetry has a way of revealing your innermost fears and desires, and it is one of our greatest resources in learning about ourselves: “To hold tight each feeling I am blessed to have felt, I write not to be known but to know myself.”
I read Lang’s collection during a period of global unrest and uncertainty, a time when the future was unclear and “normal” didn’t exist anymore. It was also a time when I was coming out on the other side of a long, harrowing grieving process. I felt an overwhelming rush of empathy in reading her poems. It was like looking straight into her heart, and seeing my own heart silhouetted underneath. I recognized myself in her experiences. I saw my pain in her words. And that’s the whole point of poetry, isn’t it? To see yourself in someone else. To feel less alone.
Our world needs poetry more than ever right now, as we struggle to find connection across distances and differences. In bringing universal emotions to life, Lang reminds us that we all have more in common than we might otherwise imagine. And perhaps the most powerful thing we share––as she writes so beautifully in the poem that gives this collection its title—is a sense of a yearning, that singular emotion that looks longingly to the past and dreamily toward the future: “how long do we go on dragging our bodies day after day through this yawning, yearning world, searching for a glimpse of what could have been?”
September Love
(Originally published in Sea of Strangers)
How many years must we put between us to prove we are no longer in love? How many summers and Septembers, distractions and chance meetings, remnants of our sad, hopeful love in another’s look, an all too familiar gesture—how long do we go on dragging our bodies day after day through this yawning, yearning world, searching for a glimpse of what could have been?
Tell me there has been someone else like me, for you. That your experience of love has not been defined by the way I spoke your name into the hollow of your neck. Ask me if I have found the same kind of reverence anywhere else but in your slow, patient hands, your sea-salt lips spilling laughter mid-sentence, my heart rising in a crescendo like a wave ready to crash.
As you whispered to me, love is the only thing that time cannot touch.
After all this time, my love for you burns constant and true, my guiding light, my morning star. Time is testament to the relentless, unyielding power of this old, ancient love. A love I will carry with me, from eons to oceans to inches, back to you.
I’m Sorry
To the poem I put
into a book
before it was ready
I’m sorry I didn’t wait
a few lines longer
To the flowers
I picked before
they were ready
When sunlight
still shone
like a prayer
on their petals
I’m sorry
To the man I will
love and love
until the word love
no longer means
anything to anyone
I’m sorry I wasn’t ready
Dear February
You were always the month of goodbyes
standing sentry to autumn and her changing hues
Tall trees and dappled light on the city pavement
shifting under my feet, skirting the cracks
I think of my mother and what she lost one February
and there are things you know about me
that I don’t want her to know
Is my secret safe with you, dear February?
Like you I am caught between the city lights and the sea
torn between my love and my home
Like you I am the sun that keeps setting too soon
missing the summer even while I’m here
Self-Preservation
I used to think love had no limits—but I draw the line at myself.
Ingredients of a Poem
Someone you miss
The whir of a blade
A half-checked list
A cake made to savor
Someone’s misfortune
That swings in your favor
The clock on the hour
The run of the mill
Love that has soured
The close of a fist
The start of a book
Whatever you wish
Motherhood
Your name is the second one
your mother gave you
Love was the first
Who You Are
He has you, words tangled, wings clipped, folded at your breast. Trapped within yourself thinking, how did I get here? With all your promise and intellect, how did I get here? Whittled down like this, reduced to something you swore you’d never be. Now, how do you tear yourself away from him without ripping your life to shreds? You no longer recognize yourself, but sweet girl, that means you still know who you are. And while there is still a glimmer of hope behind those sad, tired eyes, know he hasn’t worn you down. And while there is an ounce of fight left in you, know he hasn’t won just yet. And while there is a chance in hell you get out of this, you come out swinging.
More a Poet
I fell asleep to the rain last night
And the sun came to me in a dream
Beaming down on me, sweeter than anything
More real to me than skin
A voice I knew as yours said to me
One day I woke up and with every breath
I thought of you
And I wanted to tell you
I thought of you too. You said
Nothing went wrong with us; we just let go
But you and I—we are eternal—okay?
By the time my eyes fluttered open
It was already daylight. And I found myself
Drenched in poetry. That morning I was
more a poet than I had ever been
Outside my window, it had been raining forever
And then the sun came quietly back
Always Will
Here we are, fantasizing about normality. Our world has turned on its axis and we have all been thrown into the air, not knowing where we’ll land. Wondering if there will still be a place for us among the ruins. Yes, we took it all for granted—but isn’t that such a blessed thing? When you’re not even thinking about what you have, because you never imagine you someday won’t.
Why I Write
I write without knowing
whom my words will find
without thinking further
than the next line
When my heart grows
too heavy to hold—I write
from the depth of my sorrow
to dizzying heights
I write without dreams
of awards or applause
but for the joy of rendering
my soul into words
To hold tight each feeling
I am blessed to have felt
I write not to be known
but to know myself
Limbo
When you wait for a man to make up his mind about you, your life cannot move forward. You can’t put your whole heart in anything else if you’re betting on something that may not come through. You can build the life of your dreams without him. You can start today. But first, you need to take your heart off the table. You have a few precious years to do what you need to do. Don’t waste them on him.
Twice in My Life
Twice in my life
I was mistaken
for someone else
Twice in my life
an imposter came
and took my place
The first time
it was my second love
It was someone I loved
The second time
it was my first love
There was nothing I loved
before I loved poetry
And what I loved
before I loved
will wage a war for me
As I walk among
the false idols
and fallen angels
the truth will give itself
to the light
The first time, my love
you will never know
how much I loved
The second time
all the world will know
The Age of Love
People ask me how old I am, and I smile. It is impolite to ask a woman her age. But I don’t mind at all. I tell them I am merely growing into my skin, that I have always been an old soul, and they ask me,
doesn’t your soul remain the age you were when you first fell in love?
Well, I answer, love is older than time, and then I tell them about you—and how I have loved you for a very, very long time.
Seasons
If you were to choose a season, which would it be?
The golden dunes of summer, wild and free
The quiet breath of winter—trees bare and stark
Or spring’s flowers and her honeybees?
Would you swim in the ocean or walk in the park?
Or catch the sunset before it grows dark?
What page of the calendar would you mark?
I’d choose fall—the season you came back to me
Fleeting
All love is fleeting—even when it lasts a lifetime
Only So Much
There is only so much you can say about a man who hurts you so covertly, so gradually. The tiny paper cuts that come one after another, so measured and subdued. It barely hurts, until it does. Yet your pain is visible to no one, sometimes, not even to yourself. There is no blood to mop up, no broken glass to sweep. Not a trace of anything untoward until it gets too much, and suddenly you are a wild animal thrashing, baring your teeth, and when they ask you why, you have nothing to show, no answer to give.
Grief
Grief is like a flower
the way it blooms
and blooms. It is
a heart-shaped wound
that never closes
A mouth, always wanting
More love is found in grief
than in love itself
Like a diamond
that can only be cut
with another diamond
grief is the only thing
that cuts through love
Between Us
There is always something between us, my love: a closed door, an endless corridor, a locked screen. There you are under the lamppost at dusk. Is it summer or are we still in spring? I can see you across the road, arms above your head waving hello. In my chest, something crashes hard as a head-on collision. And suddenly you grow further away like gravity turned on its side, you are up, and I am down. Here comes the feeling of falling I’d forgotten, tried to bury beneath the years. Do you see me anymore, my dear, do you trust yourself now? Does it make you smile to know you were right about me all along, somewhere deep down, does it kill you?
A Life Unlived
We reminisce so much about the past that it becomes like a second shadow. We dream so much about the future that we are hardly present.
We talk so much about our lives, we forget to live it.
Twenty Nineteen
This year broke like a ray of sun on rain; hope that pierced my heart like an ache. Brought the promise of a new beginning; a chance to set things right. But it came with the same old sadness, the same betrayals, the inescapable turmoil of my life. The peaks and valleys of my days, like the line of a pulse shooting up so high, I thought nothing would ever touch me again, and then so low that nothing could.
This year found new ways to break my heart but I didn’t let it break me. Gave as much as it took and still left me wanting. Left me with a proud, unwavering sense of myself, and a fierce, unbreakable resolve to conquer the next.
Let It
I have a rule about not thinking where I am or what comes next. I guess when you let go of the need to know, everything tends to fall into place. It is okay to dream, to allow your higher self to take care of the rest.
So, if something is calling you, answer. If it bursts out of your chest like a trapped bird set free, follow it. There is a mysterious pull that longs to take you exactly where you need to go. Let it.
All I See
Did you say I am the girl who reads too much into everything—that I can’t look at a word without seeing a poem—or turn a flower into a field? I never see things as they are, only what they could be. So, can you blame me when I look at you and all I see is love.
Locked Boxes
My mind is filled with keys
and locked boxes
With every turn I hear
the click of a pen
In every box
there is a poem
Crystal Ball
When I look back on my life, it is so easy to see how every decision could have led me elsewhere. And if only I’d had the gift of hindsight, I could have changed it for the better. But how could I have known that crystal balls are just a skewed reflection of our present? So now I am standing here, wondering what direction I should go in. Looking, looking for what I’m not seeing.
For a Man
My absolute love and adoration for a man can live in peace with my feminism.
Nine Books
The first book was a song that came from nowhere. The second and third bloomed like a garden I kept in secret. By the fourth, something dark was brewing. I lost my way at five, six, and seven. By eight I wanted blood. Here at nine I am back to the sweet insistent singing from where it started. Never has my voice echoed so freely. Drawn from the well of my soul. And I will always sing like this from now on. Even if I’m the only one who hears it.