The Power You Once Held

Tell me again, unending silence in my cavern of loneliness. Break--

my vow

spoken under the eucalyptus tree.

Replay the memories of our undying essence.

rewind. repeat. remember the thrum of a husband's heartbeat.

I turn off stereo static, shut my eyes, and wish your smell of pine away.

I could have left, should have left, could have told the world your lies.

But why stoop to that level? Didn't you--

Paint me your whore.

Claim to call me forth: your succubus, the vampiric lover who sucked

your soul down into the dark depths of hell.

Only-- if I were the villain, a demon, wouldn't I have landed softly on my feet, thrust away the shame, and reveled in the debauchery?

Who are you, traitor to our moment?

I see eyes I no longer know, eyes I no longer care to look into.

You wanted a villain. You wanted a whore. You wanted a wife-turned-mistress. You broke our covenant.

I said yes to the divorce, stayed silent, mourned.

Still,

I remember the sting from a slap so many years ago that I can still feel on my cheek, and I feel the pent-up anger building, building so high, the crisp rise of bile when I think of you, when I see you stare so lovingly into the void of her unsuspecting eyes.

Goddess, is this what it is to hate? To realize that all this time that there was me, there was she?

Only where I look for hatred, to feel that cold, burning ice-- I find not the heat of ire.

I feel the tears that want to rise unbidden somewhere in my sinuses. The ghostly prick of them is there, but where they should come, rolling down, in witness to my grief, my eyes are dry.

Is this indifference?

To know that you who swore betrayal, who poisoned many wells of my friendships, who not only threatened but devastated my world now will repeat the sins of your past with someone less wiser, more foolish.

Unending silence in this cavern of loneliness-- I welcome your presence. Come sit with me like the wasteland of the rock; you need not speak--not to him, not to me.

I'll part my lips and drink the tear that slides across your surface, my face now wet in knowing.