Beatrice

Once.
Just once is all it took
for me to find my way inside you,
to infect you,
to settle into your bones.
And yet.
You let me be chosen by another.
You, too, chose someone else.
But you never quite uncurled your fingers all the way.
You knew you needed me
to become who you were meant to be.

*****

Yes, that's it.
Hold me to wall like the pagan you truly are
and call me Bice as you pound out
the rhythm your stanzas will take.
Bury your most vivid imagery deep within me,
and let your cantos spill down my thighs.
Lash me with the thoughts that rage inside you like a storm, and
let me be catalyst for everything within you that needs — that demands — to be expressed.
This was what I was made for:
To make you a poet.
To make you the man you were destined to be.
To make you immortal.

*****

I am gone now,
dead and buried.
Or perhaps it just feels that way to you.
And yet I have not diminished;
in fact, my power over you has only grown:
it guides your pen,
it fills dreams from which you cannot wake,
it is your constant companion.
It drives you.
Do I take solace in knowing history
will remember me for inspiring your greatest work?
No.
I would much have preferred that we had lived and died unknown,
but together:
Lovers, partners, equals.
But fate had different plans for us.
Or perhaps we were the ones who got it all wrong.
And the wages of sin is death:
An eternal dance upon scorched feet,
An incurable fever,
A never-ending
Inferno.