Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
He asks.
The world must seem so beautiful
Through his rose-tinted looking glass,
Blinders fashioned from
Bouquets
Jewels
Promises.
The delusions of a romantic —
Is this sincerity?
I’m not sure.
For a summer’s day is as beautiful as a dream,
A wish;
To dream of summer is to wish for
Escape.
Perhaps
Flattery is an offense hidden
Behind soft petals of red,
A thorn —
For if this love be genuine,
Why escape
When I already await you here?
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
He says.
But even statues must die.
An eternal summer is destruction disguised,
The Earth frozen in time,
The death of reality,
The end to natural bounty —
Love destroys even at its brightest.
I am but a simple girl,
A simple woman,
Who longs for the snows of winter
The thunderstorms of spring
And the hovering death of autumn.
What do I do with this lover’s sonnet?
A lover whose eyes
Stand captured by distant horizon,
Seeing past me
Through me
Anything but me.
What to do when love
Makes blind
Its willing victim,
Its unwilling sacrifice.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee,
He promises.
Am I now to be
Trapped ––
A bird in a gilded cage
Of unfading green?
Is this love?
I have never loved, and
My question echoes through the abyss
Of this hallowed chamber
Of the apple of his eye.
If he loves me, then why
Must I be punished to eternity?
Death is an old friend —
Does love demand abandonment?
Who is to say,
When the only one who speaks of love
Writes sonnets
Rose-tinted,
Rose-stained.
Daily Arts Writer Madeleine Virginia Gannon can be reached at mvmg@umich.edu.