forgiving hera.

"The Hydra’s gain from loss, with doubled strength, was all in vain."
- Ovid, Metamorphoses

in each face i saw the same slanted eyes
staring back with each aching lunge
nine sets of teeth glinted at my reach
lest you forget the story i have the golden sword

just scales protected that hollow
you were nothing but simple cells
and sticky fluid among the algae

but her love for you was not lost
she was intent on paying tribute
she set you among the burning stars
flanked by cancer your prize was

flumes of smoke that would curl
like singed hairs like halos like hot
breath lifting through this ether

without her i would not know you
my love drops at her feet
so now i just nod my head
to see you hanging behind the night

a serpent's face set on fire

so eve ate the fig.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


i forget that i'm turning 30 this year. perhaps it's because i feel as lost as i did five or six years ago, or perhaps it's due to the pattern of mistakes or missteps i continue to make. despite this, i am a different woman making the same choices... possibly it's a lesson i need to learn and re-learn and re-learn. i'm not where i imagined i would be at 30... not even close. and with the same heaviness in my heart, it's hard to shake the feeling that someone is trying to teach me the same damn lesson. maybe we have a "life theme" set out before us - a preconceived map that routes us to the same people, the same events, and in my case, the same heartbreaks. i'm not suggesting my theme is centered on unrequited love, though maybe it's disappointment. expectation. fear of confession. fear of losing. fear of failing.

what is even harder to imagine is that my dad has been gone for over a year. 2011 just whirled me around and then off she went... thankfully, with very little cuts and scrapes left behind. i transformed. i recovered from miles and miles of a broken heart. i helped a friend through his own heartbreak. i laughed more than i ever thought i could; i cried as much as i always have. i forgave. i created. writing a poem felt like falling in love. i went brunette. i got tattoos. i went camping with my sisters. i lived for months in a gazebo. i made some great friends. some great lovers. some great teachers. i moved. and i missed my dad.

maybe this isn't the best i can do for the not-even-72-hours into the new year; however, i intend to make it worth something. it's not a lot, but it can lend itself to being more than i need.