Poème de la semaine: Une Collection de la Fondatrice Poem 39, Dimanche Matin, August: Pour Mon Amour
Author: Sofia Pantazi, 2023 - Current | Olive Trees
Each week, Sofia Pantazi shares a poem from her book Olive Trees, which she is currently working on. Inspired by her Dutch and Greek heritage, personal experiences from childhood to the present, and her life living in Paris for the past three years. Through her emotions and reflections, she invites readers to explore moments of vulnerability, strength, and growth—capturing the beauty of life’s everyday journey.
Olive Trees, Poem 39, August 2024
Dimanche Matin, August: Pour Mon Amour
There are mornings that seem to live outside the boundaries of time—where the air hums with quiet meaning and the sunlight doesn’t just warm your skin, but your soul. That was the feeling I wanted to immortalize in “dimanche matin, august.” This poem is a love letter, not just to someone I cherished, but to the bittersweet nature of love itself—its depth, its uncertainty, and its unrelenting grip on the heart.
That Sunday morning, the world felt still. Laying beside the person I adored, hand in hand, a light breeze wrapped around us as if it, too, wanted to witness something fragile being born. I remember thinking: How can something so simple—this moment—feel like home, when it rests on such unsure ground? That’s where the poem began.
The verses explore the paradox of love: the warmth of closeness shadowed by the cold doubt of impermanence. I was deeply in love, but also terrified. Terrified because I knew their heart didn’t fully belong to me. And yet, I couldn’t stop loving. It was like trying to hold onto a flame without getting burned.
I swore to myself that I would never say “I love you” again—not after the hurt I had endured in the past. But there I was, breaking that promise at midnight, choking on those words that had once tasted like betrayal, now blooming from my lips again with trembling hope.
The poem also reflects my struggle with emotional safety. Loving deeply while fearing abandonment has always made me want to retreat, to curl inward like a child hiding from thunder. But love doesn’t always give us the option to protect ourselves. Sometimes, it demands that we stay exposed.
The metaphor of the flower waiting to be watered speaks to that vulnerability. How long can you keep blooming when you don’t know if you’re being nurtured? And yet, love kept me there. Hoping. Waiting. Still willing.
In writing about the pain I’ve endured—abuse, emotional wounds—I’m not seeking pity. I’m acknowledging the strength it took to keep my softness. To keep loving, despite everything. That, to me, is the most radical act of all.
The final stanzas carry both a promise and a warning. If the love I offered is rejected or taken for granted, it will still linger—in absence, in memory, in every futile search for something similar. My love, once offered freely, will become a haunting echo. And maybe then, only in my absence, will its true weight be understood.
“Je t’aime,” I whisper in the final line—not as a declaration, but as a legacy. A quiet truth that will live in the spaces we once shared.
