She gazes expectantly out the window;
silently praising herself for sending the letter.
Her face shines with a smile.
Tonight will be just like the movies.
Her eyes close at the fantasies she conjures up,
as she nervously twiddles her hair.
She gently pins back a lock of hair;
checking her appearance in the window.
She wills him to hurry up,
mentally checking the directions in her letter.
She did say the café across from the movies.
But still no sign of his sparkling white smile.
For a brief moment, her own smile
widens as she sees a flash of blonde hair.
But it’s only a poster outside the movies.
She turns her gaze away from the window.
He mustn’t have got her letter;
otherwise he would have shown up.
She tries to keep her spirits up,
pinning her face in a plastic smile.
She hopes he liked what she wrote in her letter;
she’d even included a lock of her hair
and a poem; given him a window
into her life, laid it out just like in the movies.
She’d seen him kissing that girl at the movies.
The memory makes her brow crinkle up.
A dark cloud seems to be fogging the window
and there is little left of her smile.
Her make-up is fading and her hair
dishevelling. How dare he ignore her letter
as though it was any old fan letter.
He thought he was a god just for being in the movies
with his perfect teeth and perfect hair;
like that was an excuse for being stuck up.
Her eyes narrow. No trace of a smile
now. She hurls her sugar dispenser at the window.
Tugging at her hair, she slowly curls up
and puts on a smile for the crowd gathering outside the window,
wishing she had never sent the letter to the boy in the movies.
Hi Izza I appreciate that
Hi Izza
I appreciate that you have chosen to work in a
certain form here and I think that is the problem.
Its good writing with lots of subtle observations
but it tends too often to fall into prose.
The images are too linea, by which I mean
its all in one sequential time-line. Poetry
works because it can jump in and out of time,
it can mix reality up and put it together again
in such a way that we get another view or snap-shot
of it.
I would turn this poem around and start some where
near the end, then paint the emotional action
around that until the reader gets the whole picture.
The poem is good on its own level but….
All the best
eric
Hmm.
I have a huge soft sort for sestinas (so, so much fun to do), and I like the theme of this one, but there’s still something missing…it needs more punch, more impact.
I’m sorry, I wish I could give you something more specific. Perhaps you could try rewriting it into blank verse and see what emerges, and then perhaps rewrite the sestina?