NEPTUNE BURNS

Shakespeare and I

if Shakespeare were alive he would have laughed at me. Poor little girl, he would say as he shook his head his two eyes islands away from me his hands two hooks with burned metal turned ink for sonnets, you love like a fool. and i would be indignant with my two eyes too close to the truth of what he says my hands two weights melded into one large wedding ring pill sized ready for my tongue to lick up. 

i love like someone who does not want pain, i weave into the air as he throws scattered fabrics on the floor. he is searching for a paper for a pen for the love that hid in his chambers at nights under moon-dusted candlelight and kisses fermenting into the ambrosia of gods. 

you love like a coward, he scoffs and though his body is being thrown onto furniture looking for that lover's shadow hidden under his bed with their heart hammering loudly in their throat begging for him not to leave - he gives me the critic's eye. you love like Ophelia drowns and Romeo slaughters, he tosses a loose sheet of paper to the floor and his eyes are two dark stones falling into the ocean of a dead man's arms. you love without caring you murder what you love.

and you write love as if it were poetry, i would sigh as he clatters to the ground. i can see his lover's shadow slipping out the door way - i can see them with their footprints splattering ink and dried sea brine tears - and i almost tell him his love is slipping away but i do not. i do not because he writes tragedy and love like if they were crows searching for the next Poe and crossed stars doomed to touch and dance till there are no candles to keep them warm. you write while your lover's shadow haunts your doorstep.

his legs have grown heavy and my lips have grown purple and numb and we sit two pathetic fools slaved to the notion that we can write our love story so grand we can forget we haunt our love at night when the world is warm and our chests feel cold. he would laugh at me, that Shakespeare and think us a pair of jesters too frayed and lovelorn to be worth the attention of the court. 

my lover's shadow stays in this room, he says, i chase it night and day searching for the moment when the evening light begins to dwindle and i might catch them. i have caught pieces of their shadow in the palms of my hands, dunk my quill into the inkwell and written our love into words that will last longer than my legs - longer than their need to hide from my destruction.

why haven't you whispered to it? their shadow stays - perhaps if you whispered your palms could become pools of hope and you wouldn't need words to feel this empty. 

perhaps, he'd grunt, but i am old and love lasts regardless of whether it is caught or savored. i know this - but you, you don't seem to see that you do not chase love like i do. you are the shadow. my legs have grown heavy and my joints creak with the exertion of chasing a love not quite lost but not quite found - they lay hidden in parts of this room forever pressing into me at night and lulling me into a sleep as profound as drowning. you are a fool.

and if Shakespeare were still alive he would cry for me, i suppose. he would hold his eyes as two emptied seashells and show me love is not chased in darkened corners and kept under sealed kisses portrayed by actors - love is a poem written and captured in this light and dark fragments of light.

i am a fool, i would have agreed with him, i love him in hiding. i love him in broken corners and chipped fingernails and skinned knees. i love him like a lover's shadow haunting his lips and caressing his arms, i love him like a bruise. i'm sorry i'm sorry i do not know how not to love him in shadowed starlight.

@vangohs your writing makes me cry and laugh and love and i only wish i could do the same for you