Lust and Fade

A Petrarchan Sonnet for the Passionate Yet Played

Here’s one for The Cavity, my previously published works. This came from Medium, originally posted in January. I explain learning about classical poetry in grad school and what the heck is a Petrarchan sonnet before diving in. I wrote another Petrarchan sonnet titled “140 Miles to Toil” and submitted it to exactly one journal. It got rejected soon after, and I scoffed at the notion that I was a decent poet. (Am I even a decent writer? On some days, I feel I should restrict myself to only shopping lists and medical intake forms.) We’ll save “140 Miles…” for August when the brutal eastern Washington 115 degree-heat dawdles minds and elongates the road ahead.

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I’m a creative nonfiction writer who immerses herself in quirky, cheeky memoir pieces and personal essays. I’m also in the last semester of my graduate work in creative writing. (As a mom also working two jobs, I welcome your applause.)

Wanting to get the most out of my studies, I took a poetry workshop class last summer that made the genre much less intimidating to me. I had no other poetry experience before this class aside from the basics we all learn as kids in school. There was one major rule for the class: no free verse. Using the exercises in Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled (highly recommend but includes some raunchiness, a warning if that’s not your thing), we studied classic meter, rhyme, and form in an engaging way.

In that class, I wrote “Lust and Fade,” a Petrarchan sonnet with fourteen lines. The first octave follows an ABBA-ABBA rhyming pattern, and the following sestet (six lines) traditionally uses CDE-CDE but can vary. I chose to keep each line at ten syllables.

The pièce de résistance is in line nine, the volta. This turn in the short poem is where we show some emotion (in bold in my piece below). It’s the “fuck this, let’s flip a table” moment. You know, the warm and fuzzies.

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Lust and Fade

Oh, my heart, my limbs, my core — wrapped in gauze.

I attempt to cure lust with a Band Aid.

Bummer, an agreement should have been made.

Contracts, concessions — the heart has no laws.

We made due and signed in flesh with our claws.

If only a call girl, I should get paid.

But you foraged in my heart, an unfair trade.

Am I the effect or was I the cause?

No, you are the one drenched in denial!

I want you to fade, no need to say “goodbye.”

Without me, you say you can’t bear to live.

Your silence brings relief, I sigh and smile.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” — a lie.

How tragic… sorry you’re so sensitive.