Lolita

While I appreciate the creativity that free verse poetry allows the writer, in the past few years I have come to enjoy writing poems with a set structure. I've found it requires a different type of creativity and freedom, almost like solving a puzzle. This poem (which I wrote in college) is a villanelle, one of my favorite structured forms. A villanelle consists of nineteen lines: five sets of three line sections, followed by a quatrain (four lines). They have two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first section repeated alternately until the final stanza, which includes both of the repeated lines. If you like a challenge when writing, I recommend trying to write one!

Content Warning: mentions of sexual abuse

Lolita

Don’t I belong to you?

You say I’m an angel, and yourself, one to bless,

your desires are demons that you can’t subdue.

You condemn my refusal as a twisted worldview.

Feminist-tainted, a lesson I should suppress.

Don’t I belong to you?

After all, my shirt was almost see-through

my steps colt-unsteady, and my hair a mess.

Your desires are demons that you can’t subdue.

This is attention, of course, that I outright pursue

with the stain on my mouth and the hem of my dress.

Don’t I belong to you?

You believe we’re inevitable, that you always knew,

I am a gift you deserve to possess;

your desires are demons that you can’t subdue.

But even if all that deception was true,

you can’t deny that I never said yes.

Your desires are demons that you can’t subdue

I don’t belong to you.