A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, b4 – poem with more than one section.


i'm in love

.

He's perfect,
a glittering diamond that fits
into her wedding ring
or the mirror image that fits
beside her on the frame

but what does perfect mean? isn't that subjective and isn't there a limit? are you sure he'll still be perfect tomorrow when your eyes change a little - see more blurry, see more - and when he changes too, and will he still he perfect ten years down the track when you've been close enough to see every bruise and cut and pore? will he still be perfect when you've licked his skin and tasted bitter fruit there instead: it won't be so new and fresh ten years down the track after all.

Shall we make a bet?
I'll offer a happy death
in exchange.
Too bad you won't get a long life
either way, but maybe you'll find it
worth the trade...or not.

.

She's a picture girl
and that's good isn't it.
You need a frame to hide behind
and she's the centrepiece to draw the eyes:
the glowing light on the candlestick
while you're the wick no-one sees
less the fire goes out

And your job's to make sure
the fire doesn't go out.

but she must be more than that, right? i mean you're a human and she's a human too and doesn't it bother you at all that she's become objective in your mind because you're objective but humans aren't objective; they're not capable of objectiveness in the limited knowledge they have of the world and the limited senses they have to derive it from.

you think you know a lot but you're a fool in retrospect and you want to be a god? it's laughable and the true gods laugh though she's right in that you're a god and he's not because he just eats apples all day and watches you take lives away…but doesn't that mean she's a god as well, your goddess that's just a game to you on your game board?

.

Fair goddess
who sits on the painting
on the wall.

Is she the fairest of them all?

fair girl who weathers your foul temper when you realise you're not a god but human, painfully human like the best of them and the worst of them as well. fair girl who plays housemaid in a doll's house when she's a model who should be on display for the world and fair girl who gives her heart to a demon who'd sooner devour it, flesh and all –

but that's not really true either, is it, since you do try and save her in your own twisted way, but it's too twisted and she falls down the stairs instead and isn't that a sad and tragic end for her and for your legacy, whatever it was of you that made her fall heads over heels? you have her the rope she fashioned into a noose to hang her throat as your one and only gift to her

And there is her fall from grace
and yours as well, as the fair
Lady Macbeth bathed in blood
is you.