His eyes are soft and brown, just like a dog's ears
If the dog's name was Velvet Ears."
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpted from Milton Elementary Love Sonnets, 1981
Aside from watching your own pants fall to your ankles in slow motion, few moments are more keenly embarrassing than discovering old love poems, especially odes we penned before we ever were truly in love.
It's hard to describe the sensation. It's a bit like being caught eating an entire tub of Cool Whip with your fingers, or someone interrupting your private bathroom-mirror dance club. You feel like the cow at the State Fair with windows through her hide to show how cud passes between all four stomachs.
"Stale ashes linger
On the corner of the bed;
My soul pyre burns yet."
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpted from Ridiculous Love Haikus, 1999
Upon resurfacing, our forgotten attempts at verse reveal our true inner selves. A light shines suddenly on our souls, at least the regions therein that spawned such fruity, flowery verse. Left long unread in a notebook, a candy box, a hope chest or a Trapper Keeper for months, years, decades or scores, these poorly-stitched literary Frankensteins emerge with mortifying boos. They're palpably painful, undeniably comical, and we cannot look away.
"To show my ruined heart to the light of day is
A luxury I cannot yet afford.
The dog needs breakfast and
Her cold nose brings me back to reality."
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpted from Ludicrous Love Free Verse, 1997
A couple of friends ridiculed me lately because I mentioned Owen is ready for some straight talk about the sexes. My pals cited that he's eight and too young. I disagree. I don't remember when I had my first crush, but I'm pretty sure it was in kindergarten or first grade.
I wrote early, so it wasn't long once I grasped writing rather than speaking my deepest emotions that I began to nervously scribble how I felt about my crushes. Granted I was so afraid my older sister would find my writings and read them out loud on the school bus that for about a year I would write down how I felt on notebook paper, then almost immediately tear my words into hundreds of pieces. At that time, it was enough just to pin words to my emotions, even at the risk of swift sibling ridicule.
"When you look at me, I feel like I'm riding a tornado.
Your glasses make you look so smart and sexy."
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpt from Ode to an Unrequited Nerd Vol. I, 1984
For my 10th birthday, someone gave me a little orange-bound diary with a lock. Problems solved. Here, I could devote myself to the futile sport of perfecting love poetry. Just who I thought would read these spectacular declarations in the future, I have never been too certain. Lord knows I would rather have been keelhauled than admit they existed, much less forward to the intended party. I ran across my cardboard-bound ego bomb last year when we moved, and I honestly blushed. Who knew a little girl fresh from her first read of "Gone With the Wind" could wax romantic with such complete confidence on the page, yet so little in the flesh?
Eventually, I got knocked around by love, and cynicism rose at last in the poet's breast. My unrequited and/or bitter romantic experiences were somehow the best. These venomous gospels remain the most breathlessly readable of all. Like the others before, these were not read by the intended parties, either -- as God is my witness, I hope that was the case.
"I love you so well, I forget about it.
You belch without a thought.
You eat the last of the waffles right in front of me."
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpted from Angry Graceless Breakup Poems, 1998
When Chris and I began dating in 1999, I had no way of knowing here was the man about whom I would pen my most honest and heartfelt prose. For the first time, I actually shared my lovey dovey poetry with the fellow who inspired it. Flat-footed disclosure proved a whole other experience and worth decades of my own expectation.
"Your love is my life's greatest gift..."
-- Julie Ball Hambrick, excerpted from Truths My Husband Taught Me, 2001
Did this new sense of completion with Chris make me want to go back and share my earlier work with earlier guys? Quite the opposite is true. Once I realized what true love, honesty and a lack of embarrassment can mean when they all happen simultaneously, I thanked Heaven that paranoia of first my sister's opinion, then everyone else's, forced me into literary seclusion.
Better to have loved and lost? Probably, but keep -- don't send -- both copies, and above all, burn your notes.
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