Hero

By: Magdalena Mihaylova

The heroine of the following poem is much like the young woman in Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's sketch from 1896 titled "Seule": exhausted by the contradiction of a love that provokes misery.

Where are you, love,

to rest your sorrows

atop mine?

My scarred knees 

are getting stronger:

they can support the

weight of your 

worries now.

But I am crying through

soft snowfall mornings

and the melancholy of

premature dusks.

I am shivering and

twisted, fetal

in darkness on 

brown bedsheet covers.

And you, love,

stay to hold me

in my hurricane of

emotion. Your touch–

Category Five 

consolation.

But I feel safe in this

storm, your arms 

replacing mine as 

the barricade.

I beg you lay your head on

mine, wipe away my tears 

as I brush off yours.

Soon we will meet in the

middle of misery,

finally understood –

one hand touching another,

one face rested on its reflection.