The Authentic
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” – David Hume, "A Treatise of Human Nature"
“What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.” – Alexander Pope, "Essay on Man"
You might have been mine, if things were different.
I can still remember your jacketed, brooding figure
With that bewitching smile that drew me in
Like a moth to a candle. You weren’t much older than me,
But taller. Your arms could row their way
Down raging rivers, but to me they seemed
The safest of harbours, the kind of security I craved for.
I was the third wheel: he and you were strangers
When I met you both. We drifted together, a triumvirate,
And yet your eyes seemed to fix on him at an angle
Different from me. But I suppose you never can tell.
And while I circled the joint, wrapped in conversation,
The circle between you two grew smaller and closer.
I sensed, but at the same time I didn’t want
To sense it. I had my own ideas of courtship:
Brazen disco encounters: hips motoring, advertising sex,
While you sought solace in drinking games
And in each other. I found someone else, briefly,
In that inferno of feet burning through the dance floor.
The distance between him and I thinned
And I felt for the first time the raging flush
Of flesh. The collision of particles defies all science,
All logic, but it happens.
Perhaps I should have capitalised on that momentum
Between bodies, but he parted ways for now.
And then I found you two together
In a tender embrace. I wanted you to be with me
Rather than him, but perhaps you decided his love
Was more authentic than anything I could offer.
The love you had for him crystallised into a kiss
And mine for you was crushed. Reason fails in moments
Like that; the spectacular visions that spool in one’s head fail.
The kiss is a revelation and an implicit contract.
It says something about the parties that share it:
To be excluded from such a jointure
Means both to be unloved and to love in a world
Divorced from the immediate. Indeed,
It was probably pure fiction: if we knew we were compatible
We would have discovered by now.
I can only imagine the kaleidoscope of images
That romance conjures: the imagination
Leaves little room for consolation,
The little room there is between you and him
In a place I have never heard of. And I’m here, in this bed,
Where absence opens around me, a wound
That fails to heal. I’ve had enough of obsessing
Over whether others will regard these hands – this body –
As so foul and coarse, as if what I have to give
Could easily decay as my own skin decays.
I want for someone to say to me: It doesn’t matter
Whether you are deaf, dumb or blind,
I will be here, always. I can’t now love less
What I did love to see before.
And I don’t want to hate you. Rather, I hate how
I’ve fallen under my own spell. The shame of being betrayed,
Not to mention the guilt, burdens me. But as long as your love
Runs down the hills with him and you
And into a dream of streetlights, footsteps and laughter,
I am likely of little consequence. I accept that now:
That is my fate. I must wrestle the hurt from my heart
And continue. I am still looking, however rare
Or inexplicable, for that authenticity in another person.
Never mind. I am sorry, and I don’t mean to be bitter
Or ironic at all, when I say to you:
Goodnight, and good luck.
