Stillbirth — Love Ends before It Begins
Aphrodite’s gift can be spurned but look out!
You stood at the door of your unhappiness when I called. Two years since we last met, I see nothing has changed.
Once, like a midwife I had slipped past the iron railings of your longing, prised you to a brief dilation, and for a moment a threshold had formed
then a blue crust as the Great Mother clamped shut, turned the colour of dirt, said you had enough of us, opted for more earth.
I saw you stoop and bend beneath Saturn’s arm, averse to my uxoriousness, a Martha tied to time and the man you didn’t love — ‘we make a good team’, you said.
And there you stand, tight and single-purposed as an eel, wearing security like a wreath, issuing a blunt refusal of love’s grace; sitting, a submarine on a sea bed, scuttled.
I turn to see Aphrodite foam and rage, for there’s a price to be paid. Play God and you will fail, and so, I begged like a master from the east: ‘Awake!’ — but you didn’t hear.
And now, alone, way out along the moon’s elliptical, I am summoned home to a melancholy of trees, tides and leaves, an earthly rhythm, another number on the long arc of failed love.
© Simon Heathcote
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