The Blue Fairy

[Todd]

Loving someone is like walking 
through a spider’s web.
Not being loved back is being left
at the bottom of the sea.

Now if you close your eyes
and wish
 
hard enough through the ice,
 
through 2,000 years
 
of emptiness, until
this hollow world flickers out.
 
If you wrap yourself in the embrace
of that singular perfect day, you will
 
still
 
never be a real boy.

[Lizzie]

I haven't watched AI in years, but it still haunts me.
Nice imagery in the first stanza. And I like the Pinocchio reference at the end.

[RiverNotch]

at times i loved AI,
at times it made me cry
at times i thought it just plain sucked -- later, why oh why
did Stanley Kubrick had to die

but back to your piece: yeah, it was AI that really popped into my head, and the earlier comment is a, ahem, lie: i remember loving the film, and it's the haunting bits i still remember. so not really the spider's web, which if it isn't already a reference may be better as one -- "is like falling / into a shallow pool" or something -- and the period dividing "flickers out" and "if you wrap" should really be a comma or a semicolon or an em dash (with "through 2,000 years / / of emptiness, until" perhaps being shortened to "through 2,000 years until" for the sake of cleaning up the sentence structure), but otherwise a solid, for those i think who've watched and loved the film evocative, piece.

[Todd]

Appreciate the feedback. Thanks Lizzie and RN.

Some nice ideas RN.

Yeah I've got a love/hate thing going with this movie. It's one of the few movies that makes me extremely sad and angry at the same time. I find it compelling but hard to watch.

[burrealist]

Loving someone is like walking 
through a spider’s web. I guess it's an irrelevant point, but I do not think of spider webs as "blue". 
Not being loved back is being left
at the bottom of the sea.

still I like this tension.
 
never be a real boy. It seems like you reference a lot of nursery rhymes and childhood favorites, just from the few pieces of yours I've read.

I have never seen AI, so I'm thinking this was a spoiler. I guess I should see it, now.

[Todd]

Yeah, I do reference a lot of children's fables and stories. It's probably how I'm wired--though the source material played on the same story so for this one it was probably inevitable.

Thanks for the comments.

[vagabond]

Loving someone is like walking 
through a spider’s web.
Not being loved back is being left
at the bottom of the sea.

Now if you close your eyes
and wish
 
hard enough through the ice,
 
through 2,000 years
 
of emptiness, until
this hollow world flickers out.
 
If you wrap yourself in the embrace
of that singular perfect day, you will
 
still
 
never be a real boy.

(pretending that the ability to love could be programmed) I think david always was a real boy.  
and maybe he realized that when his “mother” told him (pretending here memories were cloned along with her body) she always loved him on that singular perfect day in the end.
 
so.. I like that poem, the images, the topic but I stumble with the last line. I would have written it so that david is a real boy in the end or feels like one, which is the same anyway.
 
I do not understand the spider web metaphor, and how walking through it (which I associate with breaking free) could mean to love.

[Todd]

Thanks for the comments, vagabond.

[just mercedes]

For personal reasons I find this post unbearably poignant.

[Achebe]

The first strophe is perfection

[ellajam]

The first strophe is perfection

Yes, love the spiderweb, you never do get those sticky bits off you.