the person you love is dead
you can’t win me back
you can’t find your happily-ever-after with me
because the person you love is dead
you can’t recapture the naïve happiness of a new relationship
you can’t live with the old me
because the person you love is dead
that person who said I love you
that person who got up to make you breakfast before you left for work
that person who would meet you at the airport and kiss you for far too long
that person you love is dead
just as I can’t go back to the old loves
the maybes
the could’ve beens
the were-they-the-ones
because they are all dead;
all of them,
dead
you can’t turn me back into the one that you want to be with
you can’t change my mind
you can’t get me to love you again
because the person you love is dead
First published in Queen Mob's Teahouse (2019)
About Paula
Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps a lot, because that's what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award, and was a semi-finalist for the 2020 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. She was the recipient of a Vermont Studio Center writing residency in 2018.
Her poetry has been published in various journals, including Passages North, Barren, New Ohio Review, SWWIM, Gulf Coast, The Spinoff, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook and Aotearotica. Her essays have been published in The Sun, Passages North, The Spinoff and Headlands: New Stories of Anxiety (Victoria University Press).
She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes and hoarding fabric.