Oh, but everything is different now.
I look behind me and see
A little witch bent over herself,
Lying in the darkness of her room
Or facing the balcony, who, distraught,
Pursues a piece of herself that she thinks is
Elsewhere, in love, in someone.
"Little me," I would tell her, "your poems
Say it all. Look, you were immersed in poison,
You were drowning in toxic oceans spilled
From canisters in the hands of bewitching sirens,
Whose grip tangled at your ankles
And pulled at the bottom, choking you.
Your heart is not to blame, little me.
And love, about which you question so much,
hating and loving, now you really know what it is.
Not time, but experience, and pain,
even it, have taught you not to mistake
the wrong with the normal, the strange
from your own, deep and natural."
So I would tell the little witch, before hugging her.