Undoing Myths

24 May

At the age of 25 I undid the Myth of you

I deleted periods from pages

Held down the backspace over sentences

Erased whole paragraphs

That was the easy part.

Once the language had crumbled

And the words went unspoken

I thought you’d be nothing but hot air

Gaseous, elusive

But Myths can be liquid

They have a way of soaking into the culture

Osmosis happened without my knowledge

You’d taken shape in my blood

Hitched a ride on platelets

And visited each of my cells and systems

And I thought I’d be rid of you.

So what now?

I will cut you out of bone, scrape you out of the marrow of me

Mine the places in my mind that make you into a mammoth,

That make you magnificent.

In the back of my eyelids the past plays out

You are too great for death or disaster,

You are more than home cooked meals

And parents’ evenings

The Mundane a monster you faced at breakfast

And slayed by lunch.

And if cherub cheeks and teenage tragedy were

Spoils of War

Perhaps yours would be a Myth worth of becoming true

But We Weren’t.

So for another 25 years I’ll be deconstructing the image of you

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