A gap in the storm:

After the unrequited love, there were a couple of fledgling relationships in the summer before university. Whatever I may have felt during those relationships, there are no poems from them.
As much as I may have wanted to write 'a cheerful poem', cheerful poems were not my forte then.

The relationship I was in before heading off to university may have been sweet and developing but it didn't survive the distance, and when I headed back for christmas with my boyfriend it was only to be told that he wanted us to separate amicably. I was quietly quite irritated by that as I had needed to wait in the snow for more than an hour to catch the delayed coach back home, and now would have a sad christmas away from my university friends too - I wished at the time he would have just told me by phone - but looking back at it I think he had tried to 'do the right thing' in telling me face to face, rather than from a distance.

 

The storm continues

The next relationship didn't follow immediately, but after a few months I met someone I eventually began to think of as 'my forever love' or 'the one'. It was when I made that decision that the next storm began brewing, though. In those days many people didn't think of having sexual relations until they had met 'the one' and it was still a widely held ideal to 'wait until marriage' so if you did decide to have sex before then you didn't necessarily want to discuss it outside the relationship.

The next theme in 'Love's Tempest' is 'Vaginismus'. For those that don't know, this is a condition in which attempting to have sex is excessively painful and until resolved it makes sex impossible. In modern times people might easily go and seek advice and with the right guidance at the right time it might not become what it became, but we didn't try and solve it that way. It became instead a very damaging relationship leading to severe depression and I whispered its secrets into my poetry. 

The first poem in this theme is as the blog title suggests:

        Torch

 

Who stokes the fire,
Did it burn already?
Did he only beckon it to rise?
Is it love, or fire in his eyes?

Who feeds the fire?
Who guards the flame?
Was it only aching with desire,
Is it joy or pain?