Tonight's Poet Corner: Sweet Shizuru
Sweet Shizuru by Belinda Roddie Sweet Shizuru, pick me up at the train station at eleven PM, and when you drive me back home, we'll play Floyd so loud that all the pretentiousness in the lyrics would evaporate and came back down as sad rain. My darling, read your poetry to me again: The sonnets, the words fluid marrow inside the rigid skeleton. I'll eat up each line like slurping long, golden strands of spaghetti, and you'll stroke the shorn, tufted locks on my head where long, golden strands of my own used to grow. Sentimental Shizuru, I know you cry a lot on Sundays. I know the mornings remind you of your grandpa back in Yokohama, when he walked you past the cherry blossom trees and drank tea with you in the backyard where you could watch the sunset. But that was years ago, and now I cradle you in my arms as sturdily as any branches could. It's all the strength I have. I hope it's enough.