Brooklyn-based, George Sarantopoulos is a Greek-American writer, serial entrepreneur, cancer survivor, and recovering NYC Council candidate. He writes about love and memory, identity and transformation, and the particular responsibility of inheritance, of carrying culture and family inside you. His work is mythic in instinct and intimate in scale, informed by Hellenic tradition, faith, and a lifelong attention to what stays behind after love changes shape.
When I was young, the songs sounded exaggerated.
Too much ache.
Too much forever.
Too much ouzo in the voice.
I thought the men were sentimental.
I thought love could be cleaner than that.
The bouzouki bent and trembled
like it was trying too hard.
The singer swore eternity
as if time could be commanded.
I didn’t understand
why the room went still at certain lines,
why a man would say matia mou
like the word itself could hold her there.
I hadn’t lost enough yet.
I hadn’t promised something
with my whole chest
and watched it age.
I hadn’t loved a woman
so completely
her absence rearranged the air.
Back then, the music was performance.
Now it is my personal record.
When the string strains,
I feel the strain.
When the voice cracks on her name,
I know why it cannot stay steady.
When longing rises in the chorus,
I understand.
It was real in that moment.
I have sworn and meant it.
I have lost and stayed upright.
I have carried desire
without bending to it.
And when the melody circles
instead of resolving,
I stop expecting it to.
The songs were never exaggerated.
My soul was just too young
to know they were accurate.
Too young to recognize
my own future in that voice,
calling someone matia mou
and meaning it.
Poetry in this post: © George Sarantopoulos
Published with the permission of George Sarantopoulos