PoemPart "Nothing Can Come Between Us"
My Dearest One!!
No words, but a quivering stomach and racing heart: how the young Tupac celebrated first love in classic fashion in “My Dearest One!!”.
- Book
- The Rose That Grew from Concrete (1999)
- Part
- Nothing Can Come Between Us
- Original text
- not reproduced (copyright); see the book
Two exclamation marks stand right behind the title: My Dearest One!! appears in the second part of The Rose That Grew from Concrete, “Nothing Can Come Between Us”. It carries no dedication. The text tells of a love in pure exuberance.
First Words Fail, Then the Images Speak
The poem opens with the classic admission that there are no words to express how much he cares about the other person. Afterwards, it delivers a whole series of them anyway. The speaker fantasizes about shared feelings: his heart had never known such joy, as if God had known what he wished for and made it reality.
In the third stanza, the infatuation turns physical: he would die to hold her, to kiss her, or simply to see her face. The stomach quivers, the body trembles, the heart beats faster. The final stanza pits money and gold against love. It ends with an image found in many poems throughout the book: he had prayed and watched the distant stars until she finally came to him.
A Love Poet the Public Did Not Want to Acknowledge
No date is documented; according to the preface by Afeni Shakur, the poems were written between 1989 and 1991. In the line about gold, the book contains a dollar sign as shorthand for money, typical of Tupac’s handwriting style. Related poems are Genesis (The Rebirth of My Heart) and Hours Pass By.
The poem shows the young Tupac as an entirely conventional love poet with motifs from pop ballads and poetry albums. That is precisely what makes the lines interesting: Nikki Giovanni writes in the foreword that the book reveals a sensitive young man whom the public did not want to acknowledge.
More on the book in the introduction.