Muse

Time was when I greeted your smiles with glee
Unfettered by the constraints of objective reality
Seeing your colors as brighter, the words you shared

Lighter – except those tinged with an unremitting despair.
I thought you felt deeper than anyone I knew
So of course I forgave the times when you were blue,

The times you lashed out indiscriminately, a whirlwind
Of pain and misery, only to later – penitent – rescind
The hard words and harder fists I accepted as my due.

You were – are – an artist.  I did not expect you to think through to
The effects those fits of spite and malice had on a mere mortal.
And I was less than that, a silent muse, a vague abstraction, a portal

For your genius to flow into.  Firstly and always I was your creation.
I did not think to question the arrangement.  I had no motivation;
Like Pygmalion I was molded to be the thing you demanded

Your essence my existence, your wishes my purpose, branded
As surely as if you had pushed scorching metal into my chest
Or dropped a collar with your name around my neck.  Obsessed

With your movements, your frustrations, with the elusive burning
Moment of inspiration, with every syllable you uttered, I was yearning
for something greater than what you said I was.  I cannot say

When it changed, when the smiles fled and rages would last for days
When my nascent sense of self – fragile but sure-footed – rebelled
At my unquestioning passivity.  The urge to soothe was quelled

By the colors your squeezing hands and kicking feet
Had painted onto the canvas of my skin in defeat.
But change it did. Quietly, I gathered my resources

I reached out to friends, family, marshalling the forces
Of my disappointed anguish into the impetus for moving on.
You went out for paints with a kiss – lusty – and a final slap – strong –

And there was a time was when that could have been enough.
But that was then.  In the now I left in search of a love less rough.