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Monday, October 17, 2011

For Emmeline

For the girl who was fraught with death
who followed it around like a martyr
with flowers in your
hair, and a pencil in your hand.
Did she reach for the moonlight
as she blinked in the face
of two familiar deathrattle eyes?
And for all your odes and well-wrought verses
were you prepared to leave
hand in hand with that spectre
when he grasped your hands in his?
And did she sigh
as the moon chilled the sky
and whisper
"I'd like to stay here,
just a little bit longer,
just a little longer, is all"
But Emmeline, with flowers in your hair,
dead ears caught your gentle cries
and you departed, the flowers falling from your hair,
to join the immortalized.

(A rough draft. If anyone knows the literary character this alludes to, I will be in awe of you for the rest of your life.)

3 comments:

  1. I have no idea what literary character that alludes to, and so I feel like I've failed you.

    I will say, though, that I didn't have the greatest of days today and was not in what could be described as a fantastic mood. But it cheered me up greatly to see that you posted, and even more so to read this wonderful poem. Fantastic work.

    Who is it?

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  2. I wasn't in a great mood today either, but seeing your compliments never fails to make me smile :) It was Emmeline Grangerford, a tiny, tiny character in Huck Finn that completely blew my mind away. She was dead in the present, she never had any lines, but her characterization and backstory was just perfect (she died at 15 from sickness, but before that she used to look in newspapers at the obituaries and write tributes to the dead).
    A bright spot in an otherwise tough to read novel, to be honest :/

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  3. Embarrassingly, I have not read Huck Finn. Well, I read like the first two or three chapters in the dead of night at my Great Aunt and Uncle's house in Norman, OK; but I've just never picked it up since then.

    Also! Ask me some questions for my video blog tomorrow! You'll earn approximately sixty billion Christopher points.

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