The Love of an Adolescent

I come to you with my new love,
It is a great, arched love, increasing upon itself.
I hate that love at times,
It springs from the unwilling need of me
And fills me with a wretched, helpless richness.

My hair is drenched with it,
It hangs like flames on my lips and eyelids.
Its fumes break forth,
From all the curves and lengths of me
And burn with dreadful splendor.

I dare not love you with all this,
And so it faints each night.
Each dawn it renews its birth,
I spread it out with all its folds about me
And gather it to myself at night, without you.

~Wanda Gág, November 12, 1921

Adolf Dehn and Wanda Gág, c. 1916