Hypergamy

María Eugenia Colón Vázquez
Departamento de Filosofía
Facultad de Humanidades, UPR RP 

Recibido: 09/03/2023; Revisado: 10/05/2023; Aceptado: 10/05/2023 

If I unveil something true, will that absolve my writing from being uninspired? And what to convey other than this trite little longing I wrap and unwrap around my finger like a string I use to fidget? After leaving every memory threadbare, after trying to spin gold from those dirty old kitchen rags, I find the truth was always too simple. The truth is like a bug climbing my skin on a scathing humid day. But who’s to say my audience deserves veracity? Didn’t you create gods as a pretense to ornate? And anyway, I thought I was supposed to like you intrusive little spectators. So tonight, why burden ourselves with reality? After all, when has reality ever made space for me? And if you don’t know what I mean, I shall respond -“exactly.”  

Under this brumous moonbeam let us amuse ourselves puppeteering every prepossessing little thing.  

 I placed my grief  

beneath the blooming flower  

and mourned the illusion of purity   

around my desire   

I wanted to rest you in a bed of autumn leaves  

and embalm your face in the debris  

without tainting your white linen sleeves  

or the memory of your wooden hair under the dim lighting  

-or your amber skin.  

I wasted madness on you  

I slithered and crawled   

in order to misconstrue 

an opera of silence  

I miss Max. I miss the light shining off his sea green eyes and warming me like a distant blaze and even the constant fear of his neglect.   

I want him to love me with all the certainty and passion of a love that won’t endure sunrise.   

Only spitefully, I want it to last forever. Yes, our love has all the consistency of melted wax.    

I miss him because he saw me enough to appreciate my chaos but not enough to target me with his stare, to expatriate me with his gaze. Never enough to demand reciprocation. Sometimes I think I could bare my whole life, bare his children, and bathe his ailing mother, all under that uncertainty; even if it means martyrizing myself by being with someone who does not reciprocate the depth of my affection.   

He’s the consumer. I in turn, learned to sing and dance like a caged quetzal. Yet most of all, for the faintest while, I learned patience. I awaited like a good woman waits so as not to shoot too soon: so as not to alarm the game with words like these. How cruelly I manipulated his audience, all while seeking my own indispensability. How meretricious and unfair: but would he even care, that I’m driven by greed?   

I care for you for all the unspeakable reasons... but I care for you just the same.  

Esta obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional.