A poem

I fashioned from myself
a poem of despair.
I labored hard
and breathed my soul
into her nostrils.
Still,
when she awoke
she was like any other poem.

So I sent my poem away,
to teach her
what sadness means.
I released her,
with my anger in a sack upon her shoulder,
to endure a lonely voyage
from desolate star to star,
through infinite spaces
of absolute darkness.

She needed
to feel skins of planets
ravaged by rocks,
to know emptiness,
to hear silence,
breathe cold cosmic winds,
and experience absolute smallness.

Years since,
she returned to me
broken,
tears flowing from every syllable,
weeping with every word,
each stanza filled
with what I had sent her for.

She begged me to take her back,
embrace her as before;
bring her into my home,
keep her warm, as my own.

Yet her tears frightened me,
her understanding mocked me,
her sorrow grated me --
Her suffering was not my suffering.
Her loneliness -- no longer mine.

I had thought of killing her,
-- murder with an axe --
and burying her remains
beneath my house.
But, years ago,
she had taken
my anger with her.

So, I sold her instead
to a far-away journal,
for only a few cents a word --

I bartered her into bondage,
made her a common whore
servicing some lonely old man
who just needed someone
to jerk his tear in the dark.