Good morning! I have quite the busy day today. For those who don’t know, I have my own business, Kris Kameron Productions. We recently expanded and I hired an employee. Here at KKP we create, edit and manage social media content for brands, businesses, content creators and influencers. I’m so proud of what I’ve built and I’m so blessed. Today I have a photoshoot in Downtown LA, meeting up with an old client and filming content for her again and then a dinner date tonight. I’m excited to wear these new boots and dress I just got. I love dressing up! So before I start my day, I wanted to share a poem I’ve been working on for a few days now.
Lately, I've been drawn to old literature. I love the way writers of that era put their words together. There's something deeply romantic about it, even when what they’re writing about is heartbreaking. I’ve become a little obsessed with Dostoevsky, and I’m currently reading Humiliated and Insulted, his novel from 1861. It’s a story about ego, unrequited love, and the messy ways pride keeps people from forgiving each other. It's so beautifully written that it inspired me to write this poem. I hope you like it <3
The Last Waltz
For years I waltzed with a candlelit ghost
and swore the warmth in your hands was real.
You kept me in the vestibule of a promise,
a door painted on the wall, a bell with no rope.
I knocked with my whole heart.
You let me believe the painted door might open.
Then the music stopped. The mask slipped, softly, the way fog slips off a graveyard,
and I found myself still dancing, my arms around a stranger in my beloved's face,
wearing it like a coat borrowed from a better soul.
You called me your soulmate. You said forever
in a voice rehearsed, like a line you'd spoken to every guest.
I know I wasn’t the only one you led across that floor.
Others had waited in that vestibule,
each of us knocking at a door you'd painted just for us.
You spoke of true love like a man who wanted it,
yet you needed a whole ballroom to tell you you were worth it,
a hunger no single heart could ever fill.
They say conscience is a kind of illness.
How lucky you are, to be so perfectly well.
You sleep in all that velvet dark like the innocent,
like a man who never signed
the quiet murder of a girl who believed every word.
I used to think you were tormented,
some brooding prince of a crumbling house.
But there was no tragedy in you, only a small, cold room
where a coward sits and calls his silence peace.
My heart is a cathedral. Yours, a coat check room.
I loved you in a language your tongue was never taught.
You wounded me. Let the ravens witness it.
But in the hour the chandeliers went out,
God knelt beside me in the wreckage,
turned my face toward the mirror, gently, and said
You have been starving at a table
where no one ever meant to feed you.
So I let go of the ghost's cold hand, and the last waltz ended.
I rose from the floor of that hollow house.
I took the love I'd poured into your cracked and empty cup
and carried it home, a lantern, to myself,
and drank it, finally, by its light.
It tasted like salt. It tasted like being alive.
I was made for a love that burns, not one that flickers out,
a mouth that says my name like a vow it means to keep.
Now that your cold hands are gone from mine,
my lantern blazes, and somewhere someone is crossing the dark,
already certain of the way to me.
I loved you. God help me, I loved you.
And then, quietly, I didn't,
the way a tide forgets the shore,
because how do you go on loving someone
who was only ever a beautiful masquerade?
You are a ghost I mistook for a man,
and I danced the whole last waltz with you alone.
Ghosts, my dear, are never hurt by the one who leaves.
They are only the ones who stay.
-KK 💕
