Two Poems About Alcestis

Dear Reader, sometimes we are both and never either.

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Sad Alcestis

If he had not asked. If she had not said yes. This is a story because something happened and we watch it unfold the same way we mistake fidelity for love. These are real problems: She is barely even there and doing nothing but nodding her head until she becomes an open doorway. I want to pull her from the stage like an animal licks at an open wound until it opens even further; the way there is a world, and that world is everywhere she is not. There is a world, but like me—she forgot.

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Happy Alcestis

She is sturdy like slamming closed the cabinets, or the way she keeps her secrets hidden in a child’s quiet footsteps down the stair at 2:00am. It is about not throwing oneself against a doorway that will not budge open; happiness is opening the fire escape and she wants to climb it like a tower. How I imagine she could be happy the way a festival laughs—but everything is Hello, how are you? Did you remember the eggs from the grocer? Cooking meats and hanging sheets over railings. I want to believe in love but it is never enough. It is always too much. If she were a seed she would grow herself a hedgerow, separating the field from the road so she could travel away, unseen, forever.