Ode to Eloise Bridgerton
Today, I looked in the mirror,
brown curls and bangs,
book in hand,
and thought,
“My God, I even look like you.”
My sweet girl,
seeing the world’s vastness
and your own littleness
is a curse I know too well.
Oh, the Internet judges,
but it’s not that you hate embroidery
or are unsympathetic to your friends
and their schemes of love.
You just don’t understand,
so you stumble over your words
like the hem of your dress,
read to escape and instead realize
there is too much to fix.
Your loneliness is inconsequential
in comparison to it all.
That’s what the boy told you, yes?
And the girl,
even if not in so many words.
They both tired of listening
to you banging on the glass,
begging for something different.
Make something of yourself.
Episode 1, and there you were,
reading my favorite novel.
This whole season,
I gazed at those eyes of
tear-stained-glass blue, wondered
if you shared this with me, too,
if, like Emma, you fell in love,
just once,
with your best friend,
the one you could never have.
Or maybe we didn’t, either of us.
She was just a safe impossiblity,
but not one worth losing.
Lost anyway,
Lost anyway,
since everyone pairs off in the end.
Love is more finite
than they all pretend,
and there we will be, still,
even if we escape the cage,
on the outside, watching.
Make something of yourself—
except it’s not about what we are,
is it?
Even spinsters want to be loved,
is it?
Even spinsters want to be loved,
but though the world is vast,
it is not vast enough
that single is not
synonymous with alone,
and I would fear that neither of us
and I would fear that neither of us
will ever have the world we want
except that, in another life,
I would listen.
I would not cut you off.
No longer would you be my reflection,
yet I am certain two sets of eyes,
one brown, one blue,
would still recognize each other.
Not a pair, and yet
no longer would we be required
to remake the world alone.
I would listen.
I would not cut you off.
No longer would you be my reflection,
yet I am certain two sets of eyes,
one brown, one blue,
would still recognize each other.
Not a pair, and yet
no longer would we be required
to remake the world alone.
