You Owe Me Diego

 

You owe me Diego.

Left me standing on the wharf.

Left me cowering in the rain.

in your shadows I was dwarfed.

It was misty.

It was cold.

We were both seventeen years old.

You left me there to make your way.

I was sick and had to stay.

I never saw you again in that life.

Relegated to being a wife.

Born together,

you were always the first.

Always had an insatiable thirst

to see other places

and meet other faces.

While I was cursed with the need to be nursed.

As I lay wasting in a sacrificial bed,

drawing near the mirror of the dead.

I made a wish,

on a spoon and a dish.

It was not a plea.

To know you once again,

keep my promise

count to ten

leaving oaths lost in tossed eternity.

But fate is a fancy fiend.

Laughing at its own jokes.

For in this time

I was given rhyme.

Heard every word

you spoke.

Once again you own the world,

and once again I’m a simple girl.

I lie in bed and read your books,

while the people praise your beguiling looks.

The pendulum will not be shook.

I am hidden,

written in my nook.

Your creativite and abundant talents

are courted and rewarded

beyond a natural balance.

They see your sheen,

it’s green with gallant.

A leading man,

you’re always valiant.

What you touch

it turns to gold.

I don’t have much.

It rots with mold.

The pattern repeats and repeats.

What’s my sin?

Why must I

forever live and die

as your missing twin?

Illustration and Poem by Mar Startari-Stegall, copyright 2019

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