Tag: immigration love story

Ch. 19 of TMM/30N and the song that always makes me cry… This is for my dad (he would know why!)

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It has been over 14 years since I cannot listen to this song without tears in my eyes.  This one is for my dad, who is Elisa’s father namesake and inspiration!  Love you daddy, even though you probably can’t read this!

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Song:  Adriano Celentano, Il Tempo Se Ne Va (Time Goes By) (about a father and daughter, see translated lyrics from Italian below) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–dqleeZ43M

Lyrics Translated  “Time Goes By”

http://lyricstranslate.com

That dress, where did you snag it?
What an astonishment
to see you wear it,
if your mother sees you, you know
tonight, we will be in deep trouble.
It’s strange but it’s really you
14 years old, or maybe a little older
You haven’t held your Barbie for some time now
And your walk is that of a lady now.

The phone calls are always a secret,
how many words in a single breath
I’d like to ask you who it is
but I know you will be embarrassed
The door is shut badly and you
on the mirror, doing your make-up
showing your cleavage.
soon, you will go out at night
and on those nights, I will never sleep

And so the time goes by
and you no longer feel like a little girl
growing in fear of your age
I had not realized it before
And so the time goes by
among dreams and worries
lacy stockings have already replaced
the white knee-length socks

Becoming a woman is natural
but a daughter
is something special
Maybe you already have a boyfriend
how many times have you cried for him
The skirt a little short and then
Malice in some of your gestures
and soon, you will go out at night
those nights, I will never sleep

And so the time goes by
and you no longer feel like a little girl
growing in fear of your age
I had not realized it before
And so the time goes by
among dreams and worries
lacy stockings have already replaced
the white knee-length socks.

LOVE YOU DADDY!

Ch. 18, a poem, and a thought… thank you as always (links below)

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I always read poems about a woman’s beauty, but not enough of them about the beauty of a man.  This poem is Elisa’s conception of Aiden’s beauty.  I hope you like it.  Song and poem below (the song’s lyrics are perfect for this).

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MALE

Your body knows no beauty that falls softly

Loosened as the moonlight on my skin,

Lilacs don’t bloom with your fragrance,

Petals don’t open at your whim.

Your beauty knows nothing of azure light,

Of droplets of dew or blossoms of cherries.

Suspended in your dense, perfumed breath,

I think of steel, not of lavender prairies.

You come with a violent beauty, like war,

One that tears through body and blood.

I crave no touch but your rough, iron hands,

As I lay sodden in your carnal flood.

Your beauty storms, beats, defiles,

Sharp tempests of air in my burning lungs.

I know my margins only from your fire,

My riverbeds and valleys only from your tongue.

Your skin doesn’t soothe, it flays me alive

I break under your fingers as morsels of bread

Clasped around your salty infinity

Your hardness shatters me like spume over crags.

I bear the brunt of your opulent being

Like this I love you, neither wrong nor right

But a man with clenched body and mind

The love I love loves me fierce and blind.

Song:  Une Femme Amoureuse, Mireille Mathieu (the words are PERFECT, translated below) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GzICQ6_Cxc

Translated lyrics:

Time flies like crazy
But today it stops for us
You look at me and who knows if you see me,
But I see only you,
I have only one question,
Your eyes, my eyes
And I sing your name
If someone else comes
I’ll drive him away and I will protect myself.

Chorus:
I am a woman in love
And inside me burns the desire of building around you
The walls of my life,
It’s my right to love you
And to want to protect you
Above all.

Yesterday, today, tomorrow
Are only one day, when you hold my hand
It’s like a fantastic plan made in heaven
For the love between us,
To be together for a long time
Or separated by oceans.
If danger comes
I’ll eliminate it and I’ll protect myself

30 Nights Poems ©2013 Ani Surnois

30 Nights of Snow ©2013 Ani Surnois

Aiden’s Letters… (this is the first letter he wrote to his son’s mother)

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Letter 4

My All,

To whom else does a man write on a day like this?  Not to his son – there are no lessons or answers to give.  Not to his mother – she would only weep.  Not to a friend – he already knows.   He writes to his woman – because she forgives.

I should write to you about how you have kept me alive.  I should say that these nights, I only fall asleep if I synchronize my lungs to yours.  You breathe like the Moonlight Sonata.  At first slowly, softly, like a butterfly on my lips.   Then, because I can’t fall asleep unless I am inside you, your breathing changes, now like a humming bird’s wings under my hands.   Your body rises and trembles, and yet you never leave my lips.  You hold on to them, as I breathe the air that you create faithfully.   And that’s when it happens.  For a blind instant, your breathing stops and it becomes a single word.  My name.  That’s how you come.  That’s how you go.  With my name on your lips, blindly, maddeningly, and for me alone.  

As you fall asleep, your breathing slows.  Deepens.  I feel an instant of jealousy for whatever dream pulls you away from me.   But your lungs let in and out a steady airflow, as if they know that without it, I am nothing.   It takes 15 of your breaths for me to fall asleep.  

I should write to thank you for breathing…  But instead, I write to add to the burden that you already carry on your delicate alabaster shoulders (I have kissed them a thousand times). 

It’s done, love.  Baghdad is razed to the ground.  Only 35 out of 650 animals in the zoo survive.  Almost 170,000 Mesopotamian artifacts are missing from the National Museum.  The National Library and all manuscripts over 7,000 years old burned down.  I don’t know how many men, women, or children are dead, or how many of them from my hand. 

Yet, there was a moment I reveled in it.   We raided a marble palace with golden doors.   You may have seen it on TV.   That is where Saddam’s son, Uday, lived.  Marble, gold, silk, milk-filled pools.  Around it, homes with no running water.  Stray dogs.   Children playing soccer with an American helmet quoting Joshua 1:9, For the Lord my God is with me wherever I go.   Blood danced in my veins as we stormed the golden doors.  I laughed at the carnage.  I whistled as we searched for bodies in the marble ruins, hoping one of them was alive so I could end him myself.

Marshall asks God for forgiveness, but I have no God with me, I have only you.   Still, every man needs an altar.   Mine is the taste of your lips and the glow of your skin.  And your soft eyes that are neither tearful, nor sad.  They sparkle with the light of open doors.  The only doors that welcome someone like me.  I suppose this letter is my knock.  And because you are not real, you let me in.

Yours,

Aiden

Ani’s Note:  Some of you may have wondered why Aiden asks Elisa “not to leave his lips” the first time they make love.  Perhaps this letter will give you  one of the answers.

30 Nights of Snow ©2013 Ani Surnois