For Anaxibia, Menelaus’ sister.

My brother always wanted to live a quiet life,
as children he would sneak behind trees in the woods and turn over rocks, watch the mealworms and
centipedes he found underneath scurry for a new place to hide.
He read books on far away lands but said that his imagination was far more exotic than sand or the deep greens of jungles.

He became the man who would launch a thousand ships
because it was said his wife was the most beautiful of women.
A woman is always more beautiful to a man if she has said that his cock is large.

I can see when it is not worth the trouble.
That the loss
will be greater than the gain.
I think of our city and what we will all lose.
He thinks of what was taken
what went without permission
what did not want to be his.

I taught my brother how to touch a woman.
I made him a leader, I gave him my strength, and he let me down the way a man can when he does not live to his potential, when they do not see what you give, what they have taken because they wanted it at that moment at that particular time.

I will speak no more of this and will tell only of the woman that everyone recalls and not the deep sounding voice I remember and the hollow cry out of him that I echoed and it being like a siren call with a wake that could turn a ship.

What We Choose to Recall