Elisabeth Writing

To The Men Who Couldn’t Love Me, 

I remember driving in hail and rain, waiting for the storm to break, a letter in my hand that asked only this: why? I wept over dried roses in wine bottles, my tears like dew, and I wondered if I could bring them back to life. I waited for them to plump up, to become satin soft, whole again: remade. Instead they seemed to shrivel more, disintegrate into ash, as if my tears of salt and sorrow were poison. When my tears slipped down your neck, did the part of you that might have loved me die? Or was that wishful thinking? Thinking that you ever could? I remember letting you scrawl your name in my journals. I remember how I couldn’t rip out those pages. I remember how I wondered if death’s bride would be loved more than I, with the pitiful remnants you gave me of lust and intrigue. 

I was only an exotic butterfly, a Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing, endangered after the folly of humans and the destructiveness of nature. The whirlwind and hurricane of love. Did you want to pin me to the wall for all to see? Did you admire the way those green flecks caught the sunlight? I remember when I was free, my wings undamaged. I was only special, only honored by your greed, until you found a new species to capture and display. To covet. 

Yes. I remember that.

I don’t need to know why you couldn’t love me. To be honest, I no longer care. I understand now that my woodland-nymph love is all encompassing, a flash of lightning that turns wildfire. I will destroy and remake both of us. You could have just told me that you aren’t strong enough to withstand my passion. Even as you traced my tattoos with wonder, you held back – what could I do to you, you wondered? Were you terrified of the pain I might inflict, with my lioness claws and teeth? Did you worry that I’d immortalize you in my vibrant poetry? Oh, but you needn’t have worried. Few have made it into my heart, fewer still into my words. Was I an amusement, something new? Me with my flower crown, me with my faerie ears and wings, me with the windows down crying and laughing as the music swells, me with my battered and repaired heart that actually became stronger because of the pain I went through, me with words on my tongue and writhing like vines in my rib cage. 

Me.

I don’t think about you, individually. You’re more like a grove of dead sycamore trees that I visit once in a while, only to remind myself of my own vitality. I don’t leave offerings at the base of your trunks. I don’t recite your names. I don’t cry. 

I laugh. 

So to the men who couldn’t love me?

Thank you. 

You made room for the ones who could.

Love,

Me.