I Scream "No" To Lost Love

I was walking downstairs , staring at the cover of a book I had just finished, realizing I didn’t have one thing to say about it. Did I enjoy the book? Yes. Aren’t there clever quotes inside? Yes. But what popped into my mind was all of these women who achieved world fame; lasting fame that has carried them from their time into the beyond, and each had, for want of a better expression (and forgive me, ladies,) “unrequited love.” I became frozen to the place where I stood.

Emily Dickinson locked in her room in white, pouring out her passion. Edith Wharton giving us poor, fallen Lily Bart that society rejects at its hard door. Edith, swathed in familial and earned wealth, never got her man either and lies in an untended grave in France. Dorothy Sayers. Plain as boiled potatoes, but wrote one of the most passionate passages ever written about a woman in love. Nancy Mitford, recreating her rejecting lover over and over again in her literature. Why weep at my bed now, lover? Now that I am dying?

Critics and theorists who rip through their lives and words say, “They chose the wrong man.” “They needed to live solitary lives to create.” “It was subconscious.” “He had to be unavailable.”

At the moment I arrived at that thought, I silently screamed “NOOOOO” at the top of my lungs into eternity.

“NOOOOOO.” They loved.

“NOOOOOO.” For them, “he” was their true love.

“NOOOOOO”, you people who sit and judge a life. You are wrong.

Remaining where I had stopped, I wrote Emily a poem:

That bundle you call “joy?”
Was the last nail
In the coffin I call “hope.”


I guess I had something to say, after all.