Sean II

I regret my poor memory. 

It keeps me loving you so long.

An unsweet torture made more bitter than a strong barley tea.

It is more bitter than the dandelion root I blow on as I pray that God grant me my wish of an easier life.

Hot, naked summer sun, unclouded kisses my skin into a reddish, tan hidden sleep of a wildcat, stretching and yawning and stressed at the great, dark maw within my chest.

Swallowing up all joy and all romance, I beat my brow, I beat my chest. These breasts could not allure you nor like mountain mists cool your desires for another woman and then another after her. Then another and another, like mirrors held up against one another, splintered their image into a faceless multitude fading away into the glasses’ green.

Undistinguishable their forms, even to my imagination, I wonder if you, too, so easily forgot them, if you, too, like myself, lost count of them.

Mount Kailash and Machhapuchhre were not enough to hold you to my chest. Sacred love was not enough for you. Not tears you could withstand, but only the shedding of winter in sex’s rivulets into spring did you bring.

Love is wholly withheld by you. Marry another woman? In so many tongues, I want to speak curses. In so many ears, I want to hear your regrets.

To the men you work with, I want them filled with your complaints. I want to hear it flutter their ear drums like the old play of butterflies in my stomach that closed its run at the theatre long ago.

No beauty was enough for you and you ran to the next woman and the next. And in the mist and the dew, I faded out of your sight. Love so blinded you. It is clear as day that I must have been the sun unseen.

I played the harp in a dungeon for the kings of the world; sung behind screens more beauteous and more seductive than sirens to soothe even banshees’ hearts; in many tongues I wove, near skilled as Arachne, such a tapestry of words as to escape even the Minotaur’s lair to the port of the Argives where I made my refuge under Phoroneus’ natural son.

Blessed by Athena, my mind was to outwit every villain and slay them by half and quarter them by Pegasus and his kin, but I would never learn how to make you love me nor or did I ever seize reign over my heart.

Nor was I ever master over the flowing streams of tears that sprung and flooded the riverbeds that my love’s sweat had carved into my ribs with such famished kisses as to trick me into a great mistake: thinking you desired me, that you wanted me above all women.

Above all men, I had put you on a mountain top, and with a keen thirst, waited for your heart to melt towards me, the way mine did at the mention of your name.

How dare you blame me for what I was not? Yes. I was a witch, but not towards you. All my spiders and snakes, all my venom was aimed at my enemies.

You criticized my writing, my poetry; those love spells which enchanted and enthralled to me many legions of women and made many more men than just yourself look at me with love.

I regret my poor heart; that it ever loved you, I pity it, but more than pity I have mercy on that young, girlish thing breaking in my chest.

Who chokes a canary in his cage? You did not even want to hear one note of the song I was taken from court to court, from king to king, from country to country in chains for the rich, the noble, and the powerful to hear.

Undine still sings in the song of my tears with the sirens that drown out my great sorrow breaking cries. Those sobs wore away the hard and stony hearts of men gentle and of men cruel in powerful waves, but it did not move you.

To the priest at church, I want you to confess your regret. Apologize to God for leaving me. Apologize to Him for the wild horse you could not brook. Apologize for spurning the loyal steed that steadfastly loved you.

May you drink no more from Cupid’s stream. May you only drink rank, stagnant waters where mosquitos brood in Dante’s Comedy over their damned lust.

I regret the child I lost. I regret the first and then the second and last. I regret that they didn’t live. I regret that I’ll never get to embrace them.

Juno may triumph over Troy, but the Muses will never tend on your wife. So greatly am I loved by the Naiades that whole schools of philosophy are born from one note of the scales I play on Pisces’ lyre.

One day, I will forgive you for your mistake. I will cling to you again, my twin tail, my fishtail, my twin flame.

One day, I will forgive you for abandoning my heart, for sacking it, and setting it aflame.

Why didn’t you understand that, sold as I was, my odd glances at you, that you so often questioned their honesty, were filled with such an overflowing desire and a daring for you to touch me? You broke me to pieces, so why didn’t you want to see me fall apart in your arms with desire?

You wanted to own me, but not possess me in passion? I will never understand you. I will never understand why you wanted to wound me. 

Why marry someone else and then kiss me? Why marry someone else and then tell me you love me? Why marry someone else, tell me you made a mistake, and then take it back a week later?

What is wrong with you? Tell me, please, and I’ll forgive you only if you leave her.