When did it begin,
This attraction to distance,
Unrequited, deprived?
Imagining the shape of your day,
Unable to share it.
The contours of your body,
Unable to feel them.
But revelling in your words and
In my fantasy of you.

Perhaps it was when a young man
Gave me that book of waltzes
Drawn to the echoes of my playing
Piercing sleepless sweltering siestas
Captivated by my bright eyes
Tinged with sadness.
And said ‘let’s write’
Inviting me to dance.

Years spent sharing and shaping myself
With our words
Our poetry, books read and written
Our longing and laughter.

No chance of misspoken words
Lovers’ fights over the mundane realities
Of our everyday lives.
No jealousy over his many lovers.
Never a disappointing evening as he greedily
Gratified himself over my nubile body,
While I explored his for hours, days, weeks, months, years.

Or was my fate sealed
Gasping for life
In that plastic capsule, fluorescent lights,
Week after week, starved of touch or a nourishing breast,
When my Mother first spoke my name?

The faithful one
The philandering hero’s Wife
Wily, devoted,
Always looking to the sea
Waiting for her love’s ship to appear on the horizon.

The reliable, obedient, capable one
Always smiling, with a song or a caress
A poem or an insight.
Years of Sunday mornings
Spent languorously contemplating our existence
Through the sockets of the immortal prince.

Never mind the whips and scorns,
The blows and torment
I would always be there
Kind and patient
With an embrace to calm her tortured soul.

Fuck that.

So I left the island
Took to the sea
Rebelled against my namesake.
Feasted my senses in every port.
ALL my senses,
Not just perfumes...
Preferring the Odyssey
To my home.

But somehow my namesake’s longing
Is grooved deep into my soul
And demands to be filled
This time
With you.