i was 17 when he hurt me

i was
-young
-weak
-tired

and i didn't know how to say no when you forced me to say yes once

i was 17 when he hurt me and
now i'm almost 22 and
the hurt fades but
it never leaves me be

annabel lee.

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe was one of my favorite poems in high school, and even reading it now I get a kind of wistfulness that is really difficult to describe. It is dark, and haunting, and relatable even as it distances itself from the reader, and it is so, so beautiful.

"My life and my bride," Poe writes, with a kind of heartache that I think only those who have loved can fully understand. I don't think it had to be a bride. I think it could have been, "My life and my child" just as easily. "The moon never beams without giving me dreams," he says, and I don't think there's anything I could say that Poe doesn't convey twice as well.

There's something kind of beautiful in tragedy.