{"sf1_id":1695969,"sf2_id":"qmyKxK1B","title":"Maybe All Confessional Essays Should Be Written In Blank Verse","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":585,"posted_at":"2021-03-15T21:19:00.000Z","tags":["Autobiographical","Gay","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1695969-maybe-all-confessional-essays-should-be-written-in-blank-verse","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/qmyKxK1B","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/bc/a2/bca27291-c022-47a8-b65d-e1fb0450ab6e","description":"#6 of poetry\n\nSofurry doesn't have any categories for writing other than 'Story,' huh?","content":"This started as a question, in my head.\n\nWhy can I not write love a happy end?\n\nWhy, when I try, must I write mourning, loss,\n\nBereavement and the need for elegy?\n\nI write unto my husband, whom I love,\n\nAnd it becomes a prayer for his soul.\n\nI write unto my boyfriend. It becomes\n\nA bittersweet farewell on sunset seas.\n\nPornography itself becomes a tale\n\nOf thousand-mile procession funeral.\n\nAnd even of my God, who I am sure\n\nDoes love me, (that is more than I can say\n\nFor that Whom I was given, as a child)\n\nI name him Rest From Grieving. Can I hope\n\nNo higher, and no happier, than Rest?\n\nThis started as a question, in my head.\n\nI think that I can answer. We shall see.\n\n  \n\nMy parents taught me not to look for love.\n\nAt least, I was so taught. It's possible\n\nThat if I had been straight I would have got\n\nThe by-osmosis learning they assumed\n\nAs premise for the lessons silence taught,\n\nBy euphemism, by dire warning, by\n\nPraise always and only of chastity.\n\nI do not think they did this by intent.\n\nThey were too orthodox, too dutiful,\n\nToo by-the-catechism Catholic,\n\nTo ignore all the praise of pregnancy\n\nThat this their faith believed in. Nonetheless,\n\nI do remember, more than once, there was\n\nA crisis named \"One of the children may\n\n(We all were teenagers, past puberty)\n\nSuspect they know what sex is! Red alert!\"\n\nAnd how much more was it a crisis when\n\nOne of them (me,) all accidentally,\n\nDiscovered that gay people did exist,\n\nIf only in myth, legend, and San Fran.\n\n(My Uncle, mother's brother, he was gay.\n\nHe lost lovers and friends to HIV.\n\nAnd this I never knew till I came out.)\n\n  \n\nThe only place that love could be allowed\n\nWas grieving. For there only was it pure.\n\nThe tales were all of unrequited sighs\n\nAnd afterward, confessions made too late.\n\nIf no debauchery was possible\n\nBecause the loved one was beyond the grave?\n\nWhy, then and only then, it was now safe\n\nTo let the prince or princess say \"I loved.\"\n\nNot \"Love,\" no present tenses. Only past.\n\n\"Farewell\" the only kiss permissible.\n\n  \n\nAnd now, why, I am grown. I am beyond\n\nTheir reach, their faith, their disapproval too,\n\n(I do not think that there is anything\n\nThat I could do to deepen that, at least)\n\nYet still I find that when I think of love\n\nTis as a lifeline, as a painkiller,\n\nAs a lost garden prelapsarian\n\nSealed fast behind a mausoleum door\n\nInscribed \"Et In Arcadia Ego\"\n\nWhere now, in memory alone, is it\n\nPermitted to speak plain. I do not know\n\nIf any cure exists. For it is but\n\nImagination that is thusly bent:\n\nI have had love, and I look to have more:\n\nWith husbands, plural, boyfriends, plural too,\n\nWith friends who reach no further than friendship,\n\nWith comrades with whom I have only met\n\nThrough lustful, digital, self-given names.\n\nBut when I think of love, it does not look\n\nLike any one, or all, of the above.\n\nIt looks like stoic longing in the cold\n\nAnd brisk of dawn departure, and a kind\n\nOf sorrow that itself is sweet to feel.\n\n  \n\nPerhaps I need no cure. Bereavement comes\n\nTo every love eventually, and if\n\nI am prepared to meet it, call it good,\n\nAnd carry love still through it and beyond?\n\nWhy then, perhaps I'm well equipped enough\n\nTo write love's ending, happy after all.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1695976-i-do-not-fear-a-season-without-hope.json"}}