Imogen: /ɪmədʒən/ Female given name. May have originated as a Shakespearen misspelling of the name Innogen.
Her life is an homage to Shakespeare
she says,
from under the tree by the jazz bar.
She’s a first-year with the wisdom of a second
and you wonder if she knows
she’s the constellations and the cartographer
and prose leaks from your pen after you see her.
You wear suits on the number 1
to reflect in the cross-section of a rock pool,
then again at your graduation
by her suggestion.
You’re Viola and Sebastian
and she leads you through how to be both.
You giggle down Ghuznee,
and kiss strangers on Courtney.
She holds your heart in her hands and gives you her mind.
You talk about the butterfly effect of a typo in her name,
and wonder
how different things would have been.
***
Three years on, those letters are hers.
The spaces between them have been warmed
by people you’ve never met.
She saw her future in a suburban house
then watched them tear it down.
She screamed a daydream from the back of a motorbike
and jumped out of a plane and learnt to fly.
She’s counting her own pentameter now.
So watch from the pit, through long-distance video calls.
Listen to her monologue for star-crossed lovers,
dance with Pyramus
and laugh with Orsino,
and love her
till you’re cross-faded under your own star-speckled sky.
The band starts up,
she sees you and smiles.
This is just the overture.
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