Maybe All Confessional Essays Should Be Written In Blank Verse
#6 of poetry
Sofurry doesn't have any categories for writing other than 'Story,' huh?
This started as a question, in my head.
Why can I not write love a happy end?
Why, when I try, must I write mourning, loss,
Bereavement and the need for elegy?
I write unto my husband, whom I love,
And it becomes a prayer for his soul.
I write unto my boyfriend. It becomes
A bittersweet farewell on sunset seas.
Pornography itself becomes a tale
Of thousand-mile procession funeral.
And even of my God, who I am sure
Does love me, (that is more than I can say
For that Whom I was given, as a child)
I name him Rest From Grieving. Can I hope
No higher, and no happier, than Rest?
This started as a question, in my head.
I think that I can answer. We shall see.
My parents taught me not to look for love.
At least, I was so taught. It's possible
That if I had been straight I would have got
The by-osmosis learning they assumed
As premise for the lessons silence taught,
By euphemism, by dire warning, by
Praise always and only of chastity.
I do not think they did this by intent.
They were too orthodox, too dutiful,
Too by-the-catechism Catholic,
To ignore all the praise of pregnancy
That this their faith believed in. Nonetheless,
I do remember, more than once, there was
A crisis named "One of the children may
(We all were teenagers, past puberty)
Suspect they know what sex is! Red alert!"
And how much more was it a crisis when
One of them (me,) all accidentally,
Discovered that gay people did exist,
If only in myth, legend, and San Fran.
(My Uncle, mother's brother, he was gay.
He lost lovers and friends to HIV.
And this I never knew till I came out.)
The only place that love could be allowed
Was grieving. For there only was it pure.
The tales were all of unrequited sighs
And afterward, confessions made too late.
If no debauchery was possible
Because the loved one was beyond the grave?
Why, then and only then, it was now safe
To let the prince or princess say "I loved."
Not "Love," no present tenses. Only past.
"Farewell" the only kiss permissible.
And now, why, I am grown. I am beyond
Their reach, their faith, their disapproval too,
(I do not think that there is anything
That I could do to deepen that, at least)
Yet still I find that when I think of love
Tis as a lifeline, as a painkiller,
As a lost garden prelapsarian
Sealed fast behind a mausoleum door
Inscribed "Et In Arcadia Ego"
Where now, in memory alone, is it
Permitted to speak plain. I do not know
If any cure exists. For it is but
Imagination that is thusly bent:
I have had love, and I look to have more:
With husbands, plural, boyfriends, plural too,
With friends who reach no further than friendship,
With comrades with whom I have only met
Through lustful, digital, self-given names.
But when I think of love, it does not look
Like any one, or all, of the above.
It looks like stoic longing in the cold
And brisk of dawn departure, and a kind
Of sorrow that itself is sweet to feel.
Perhaps I need no cure. Bereavement comes
To every love eventually, and if
I am prepared to meet it, call it good,
And carry love still through it and beyond?
Why then, perhaps I'm well equipped enough
To write love's ending, happy after all.