I mythologize you,
and I ache for the same.
I made you into dragons,
into lilac-eyed elves and sorcerers,
into Hades, fauns and even eternal embers.
I bleed out onto these pages
and swirl my fingers in the crimson paint,
tracing stars with names that still make my chest ache, even now.
I’m the writer curled in the window, wishing; wondering if I was more than a passing comet.
You linger in Tir Na Nog,
wandering among the fey and warriors.
You tip your face up to the light and eat the golden apples trembling with youth,
your fingers tracing those silver-cast branches.
Even when you flayed me,
even when we were nothing but a barren wasteland, even when your cruel colloquies on this unseen
poet reverberate in my skull –
you’re. still. immortal.
I made you that way.
I took you to that place and left you there,
watching until you and that legendary land were nothing but mist and pixels,
my fingers outstretched…
but you’d turned away.
And I saw it.
I just pretended I didn’t.
Sometimes I want to tear
the well-loved maps off the wall.
I want to shove every scrap of them into the fire.
The constellations of our time together,
the night we met, the way my eyes shined in the mountain light
and the ways yours traced the shape of my lips.
The hazy lagoons where we once dove in moonlight, my legs hooked around your waist,
my young body quivering with restlessness.
The car park,
lightning tapping at the window,
the world blurring beyond us,
like this was the epiphany.
The spring garden,
faerie wings and a crown of flowers,
my heart alight with joy,
my heart dancing in my chest.
The ocean laughing,
coaxing us to enter,
and how, through my tears,
I could see you considering it.
I’ll burn them to ash.
Because why should you see what it meant?
Why should you see the places,
the memories, the moments
that meant so much to me,
when I don’t know how little
or how much they meant to you?
You are gryphons, muses, mythic gods –
And what am I?
The headless, abandoned mannequin,
collecting dust?
Stuck with forgotten pins of anger and resentment.
The witch?
The one who made you feral with want?
And you could blame my potions or my spells
but we both know it was my green irises
and the way my laugh lived in your chest
– long after I stopped laughing
The one who left once, twice, half a dozen times?
Because I was heartless, cruel?
No. It was because I didn’t see another way.
(I’m sorry.)
The ex.
Yea, that one.
The one who did damage.
The one who made you retreat,
made you hate, made you cold.
The crazy one.
The one you had to erase.
But that erasure,
that lack of proof,
is the thing that keeps me up at night.
I toss and turn,
the sweat pooling in my thighs,
my fingers a query –
the endless conjecture –
Did I matter at all?
I want to know that you carry
a photo of me in your wallet.
That you pull it out,
smooth out the creases,
and sigh at my smile.
I want to know that every time
you look into your thoracic spine
you remember the peonies I planted there.
That you don’t pull them out by the roots.
I want to know that sometimes
a blonde nymph makes you look twice,
That you remember twining these locks
around your finger and pulling at my unruly curls.
I want to know that you have
my handwritten poems in your bedside drawer,
That you hear my husky voice reading them to you, the ache in my words dripping
with love and seduction.
That your hands tighten.
That you tremble.
I want to know that if you could,
you’d be writing
and aching
and pining
and screaming
and hating
and loving
and wondering wishing wondering wishing wondering…
I want to know that
somewhere out there,
No I’m not as forgotten as I thought.
Elisabeth Writing 