From a Reader to Her Love

My dear, I don’t wish to torment you;

Don’t lose sleep about the moments I do.

My fleeting affairs with impossible heroes

All end the same way: a close.

They crept in my mind while you, unknowing, slumbered.

But rest; my pages with them are numbered.

 

I hope I often enough confess my love

To banish your doubts with a sure shove.

 My heart is only yours, unmoved by their touch.

Please, do not think this lady doth protest too much.

But my actions have prompted your unwilling accusation,

And I am grieved by your frustration.

So because the evidence I cannot deny,

Here I lay this chapter open to your doleful eye.

 

My first intrigue was Romeo, blinded by his sun,

Proclaiming her beauty even before their love had begun.

In his unrepentant devotion I was lost,

And I, too, became star-crossed.

Yet I am no Juliet; on him I waste no prayer.

I know his cries can move not even air.

 

Then as I went on with my life,

I met a man who I didn’t know already had a wife.

His aloofness held for me a mystery;

I couldn’t help but be drawn out of curiosity,

For behind his crude insults I occasionally saw

A greater virtue far surpassing any flaw.

Mr. Rochester’s eye had been sharpened by fate’s blows,

And for every slander a new praise later rose.

But to his secret love I am no more chained,

A fresh view of reality I soon regained.

 

For my next dalliance I cannot be wholly blamed,

Though the scalawag could not be shamed,

Till when, forsaking all appearance of a knave,

Rhett stood a father true beside the grave.

But Rhett himself cannot be found,

And so our love remains page-bound.

 

There have been many others to whom my thoughts have drifted,

Merely fiction, and the mask of fantasy has been lifted.

Now as I write my own, real story,

Only one character has the glory.

Let the cover confirm my devotion anew

Look at the title, love: it’s you.