On being the mistress
I have generally learned to ignore
the things men say in bed.
But you leave dripping fatalism in my ear
like honey.
"You will be the end of me."
Soon I search the fogged mirror
for anything more nefarious
than unshed adolescence,
hunger and tears equally ready.
No one there is peddling extinction. There are the beasts, of course,
disordering the dark libraries of my mind,
but I know them,
and all they want is ample solitude.
Speaking of which,
I begin to suspect that you are
being a little dramatic.
What is the end anyway
except beginning,
asking all the questions again,
the quick flaying of coming clean
when you thought the game
was to layer compromise on compromise
and forge a life
from the religion of consequences.
Eliot said to hold fast to the end,
if you are fortunate enough to reach it
still breathing.
The beginning is there again,
and the end again--
find it enough,
and you find home.
But it is not advice easily taken,
or often.
