Daphne holds the chase

romeo, did you know that you love me
with such sincerity that it makes me sick?

so, will you love me still if i tell you that
my heart does not belong to you but belongs,

rather, to the fascist with his boot on my
neck? you kiss my neck like you are worshipping

it; he mauls it: you exalt me to heights i had
only known through the pedestals i put Him on.

and yet he did not steal my heart, he did not
slip it away from me in the still of the night and

run off with it in a canoe, perhaps, drenched in
the moonlight so cold it matched the molten silver

of his eyes, no, I gave it to him, bite by bite, tossing
each piece he rejected into the cool darkness of the

waters below. so maybe my heart does not belong
to you, or to him, but belongs, rather, to the sea:

(and maybe I am counting time before i go and marry
the sea: it is what fate dictates for people like me)

where it rests glittering like jewels on the sea-bed,
dejected and forgotten, saprophytic: surviving on the

memories of a ghost-love, occasionally catching
glimpses of life on ground through refractions of light

on the waves, humming itself to sleep with the deafening
silent lullaby that encompasses all life in the ocean.