Sonnet Sequence: Something in Me Be Maligned

I have loved a thousand people: for everywhere I see the life running, sacred, through the feeble, transparent veins that beg the knife to untangle them, through glowing skin, I love; but once, unknowing, I fell in love soul-breakingly and deeply, slowly, achingly, with so powerful a passion that thinking of it even now can stop me cold. It was a vow that was more than life would ration to anyone if it were just. It was the kind of love that must make you give away whatever that person asks for: wealth, the ghost, life, the future; things you never would give; the things you value most: all your self-respect, your splendor, and your freedom.

My surrender was total. I gave all I had: my soul, my innocence, for mad ecstasy was all I noticed.

Because of that, my skin is scarred; the gates of Paradise are barred to me, even the remotest, most lonely corner of the sky, because I took his sin on my soul and gave my righteous, blameless uprightness to a guilty man for a pittance.

Every shameless existent person, if he can, lies to hide the darkness in him, even men who have a minim of honor; he obscured my view and lied and laughed until he knew I could never leave. I’ll never for this condemn him; I have done it, too. But he was ever one to create the drama: clever, unfathomable, and sedate. The darkness in his soul was great. All the hatred in his person was overpowering to me, awesome, and I watched it worsen, growing larger than an ocean, stronger in its coarse emotion than tidal waves. But I was bound to him and trapped in his profound sea before I sensed the water, all lost, and ready for my death in all that hatred. Every breath stolen from the sea could slaughter my will to swim.

Yet I am strong, far stronger than I knew, and long after I was swallowed under, I surfaced. I escaped, but I left there everything. His plunder included all myself.

The sky, empty, was above me, winking stars when finally the stinking abomination spat me out. I splashed there for a while, without aim, and then I crawled too slowly from Satan’s sea. It left me cold and naked, loathsome to behold, with the wings of the unholy and putrid vulture, fingers webbed, with common demon eyes that ebbed with the tide. Now I was hollow and soulless, mindless, bloodless, drained, too forlorn to lead or follow, and by the filthy water stained.

Stained and empty, I am standing here in snowfall, still demanding that something in me be maligned. Though years have come and gone, I find I have never felt the stinging of cold since I emerged, nor heat of summer, nor the pain of sweet happiness, nor sorrow bringing enlightenment. I am beloved by many, so they tell me, shoved into my associations. The men and women who are so cursed as to have had relations of any type with me will go from my hands, confused, forsaken. How can I look into warm, unshaken, forgiving eyes that worship me and tell those pupils honestly, “I have nothing; I’m diminished. I offer no support, no screams, no future heart, not even dreams. What is new to you, I’ve finished; I’ve seen the underbelly of the silver-cloudy life you love”?