Tear Away Death

“Well you can’t just stop there, now you have to tell me the next verse.”

“It kind of ruins the whole poem, at least this translation does. They talk about saliva.”

“So, you’re a musician, eh? I dig musicians and accents”

“Ah... it was a poem, but yes.” Trevor wasn’t so shy to admit. “I like to play music.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like practice makes perfect when it comes to poetry. If you suck, you can write a thousand poems and still suck.” He said, brows raised. And this side of him, the pretentious, stuck-up scholar, hadn’t seen daylight in awhile, but still Tony slipped right back into it so easily. 

“Is... is that... really?” Trevor hadn’t realized writing didn’t work like, well, everything else. “You’re being honest though? Not just humble.” He had to chuckle, not taking his word for it immediately.

 “I’m more than just a pretty face, you know.” He teased, laughing. It was strange, to talk about this so candidly with someone. It had been awhile. “Yeah, I do. Not a lot, and it’s shit, but I still do.”

He shows a simple smirk, agreeable enough, and continued to toss aside children’s books and long expired volumes of Chicken Soup for the Soul. “I don’t see how it could be horrible, since you’ve been interested for so long.” Trevor digressed. “We’re all our own worst critics anyway.”

 “Oh, yeah, you won’t have any luck with that here. Last one I saw was at the university. Mm, for fun, yeah. When I was in school poetry was kind of my area, I guess. But that never panned out, so now it’s just a hobby.”

“You know your stuff.” He chuckled, only surprised since it seemed the man knew where to find specific volumes in the city. “So you wrote poetry?” Trevor wrote some for his tutors long ago, but it was a chore like everything else and not good. “Or, uh, write? Still?”

“No, probably not. So you into poetry then? Or just familiar with Baudelaire?”

“I’d look for a volume in French, but let’s be honest that’s asking for far too much. I enjoy reading in general, passes the time especially at work. Yourself?”

“Well yeah, when you’re using Aggeler’s translation. I always liked Piaget Shanks’ myself. I mean, the rhyming seems cheesey, but it feels more true to the original to me. And it doesn’t mention spit.”

“Yeah the saliva comment just throws everything off. Still, I don’t think there will be too many versions of Baudelaire in this dollar stack.”

I crave touch, yet I flinch every time someone is close enough.