Psyche

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1 | When we are variables of I,
              we are incomplete;
but love is the only invariable of you,
and love can ask anything;
for what else was I made
              but to fall in defeat to you?

As though you'd already taken it all
with you; yet moving closer into me;
as though mourning my loss
with me, and as the moonlight merged
into one moving body

              that belonged to you,
you made me invisible; a night lost to light,
              as present and presence combines
in the dark recesses of a mind,
showing me how we came together
and how we would inevitably fall apart.

              The fear of loss and the joy of love
walking around each other
like intersecting circles, for pushed
between our two extremes
we made suffering our history,
and then became its victim,
and forced love to take
on the false role of solace,

when its real role
is to change everything:
where love-fills,
              love-stills,
love-heats,
              love-brights,
love-brakes,
              love-makes,
love-darks,
              love-lights
love excites to break down our molecules,
like the soil; to sing a soul-rush,
              a soul-crush;
on a soul-roller
              soul-coaster
                            soul-ride;
with a soul-rider,
              soul-igniter;
                            a soul-lighter;

for you were
love-gentle, love-unhurried,
where I was love-eaten
by red petal buds, edges burned black,
opening in the shape of lips

curvaceously lined with peach
blossom and dew, that I drew
from you, as you came as surely
as the death that comes
at the end of each day without you.

2 | Our choices changed
the meaning of everything we did;
the same setting but in a different telling,
              even though the story stays the same
the reading of it does not;

but our story was the same,
and a relationship has a life of its own;
a child you give birth to,
conceived, nurtured; and yet
you watch grow, fall ill and die;

embodied in a single moment,
a thousand days of investment
where love becomes a matter of survival;
and not a recital or poetical revival,
as though love is a territorial war
and our bodies a handful
of soil to fight over;

but how long does a landscape
take to recover from the insult
of such a war? -- fought
in the name of love,
but as far from its teaching
as a star mirrored
in the orb of an eye.

3 | For love is the law of the you, not I,
which changes everything
and can sweeten every sting, except
                            its bitter end,
even if all that is said,
is said as a friend;
its absence brings
the pestilence of darkness
without the hope of light;

Psyche blindfolded without her Eros
                            that night,
for here is the soul of love, my love,
of Psyche's Eros, a tale of old:
that love cannot live without trust;

a door shut tight by an untimely gust
                            of wind
from the backside of the mind,
where you can't bid your heart
to follow you into hiding from its scent,
when feelings refuse to do the same,

and how time really toils in a barren land,
for love is as dependent on trust
as a god that needs faith to stand,

Eros in the hold of a psyche
that beholds she must first see
before she can fully believe

and how we work to deceive
Psyche with all the lines we feed
as comfort food to the darkened mood;

or how she leans against you,
but only as a shadow now,
like sunrise slipping away
in a last true goodbye
leaving you with only the why

of a loss buried under yellowed moss
and a Sun you can't hate
though it shines without you,
because it reminds your heart

of a love you once knew.

Published 31 May, 2026

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