Orpheus Descending

Love’s Hallucination

I suffered love’s hallucination

Twice over.

The first time for seeing

What was not there

The false apparition

Of empty words and actions;

And the second time

For not seeing what was there

The substance of your loyal love.

Reverse hallucination

Is just as bad.

When I awoke

You were gone.  

*****

Ex-Wife

Ex-wife

Hateful prefix, this,

That proclaims

Negation, Nullity, No-thing.

But, dear Margaret,

Do not be

Ex-wife

And

Ex-human being.

 

-From Catherine Lim’s book of Poems ‘Love’s Lonely Impulses’