The Lake House with Pink Sweet Pea Vines by Ramya Valipe (17, Texas)

We were 13, two star- crossed lovers but we didn't know it yet, 
As we skipped rocks and watched them dip into the crystalline waters. 
Close our eyes, count to ten, twin smiles dancing across our faces as we raced to find our friends with the sun setting. 
And the lake house with the pink sweet pea vines was my second favorite place to be,
I would say the first was whenever your arms wrapped around me.

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You were supposed to be the one to pull me from the lips of the deep end. 
Kiss me on the brow while we're dancing. 
Ask me if I needed a hug for everything that happened today. 
But now I'm sitting in our old lake house, its walls covered in pink sweet pea vines,
Left wondering how the stars would be so cruel to align themselves just to fall apart on some silent cue.

Now could it have been that I was just too much like Icarus, thinking that I had won the greatest prize?
How could I have known that you would strike the final chord so soon?
I was betting on forever being our favorite tune.
I was ready to see when your eyes would begin to crinkle, silver hair to match your wrinkles. 
All I have now is a solo return to our rotting lake house every June, taking comfort that the pink sweet pea vines knew how much I treasured you.

I threw a million pennies into the well, never thought that I'd have to spend them on you. 
If our time had come and gone then why is your presence still shadowing me close, a hand keeping me under our lake’s crystalline waters? 
Because now I have to look into your eyes and pray that you can't hear the sound of my heart breaking over the fray.
 I waited and tried to find a way to repair our lake house, but the damage was wrought before I could have ever known. 
Now I’m left praying that the memories tangled up in our pink sweet pea vines would tangle you up with me once more.

And if the fates ever cared about us, it didn't seem like they bothered.
Because our master didn't even need to cut the strings, too thin they grew as our lives became marked with the passage of time. 
So now I'm sitting here in our lake house, its desolate shell an echo of my chest. 
Knowing I'll just let the dust collect on my shoulders, covering my favorite white dress. 
Letting our pink sweet pea vines takes me over, unable to cut them off for my final departure. 

Premise and Symbolism: This is a poem about a girl who felt that her childhood love and her would eventually get married and spend the rest of their lives together. Instead, they grew apart and she is left trying to go back to her childhood and save her love for she can never get herself to move on. The motif of the lake house highlights how her relationship with her childhood love is going, as the lake house gets rotted and neglected so does her relationship. The pink sweet pea vines are representative of both pleasure and final goodbyes, so all her happiest memories are tied up into those vines. But, once they encase her at the end of her poem, she can never say her final goodbye to the lake house and her relationship. 

 

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