Kafka’s metamorphosis was much easier
to swallow. Your Psyche
and my Eros were lovers long
before the French learned how to kiss.
For we were greenery and gravity and gross
negligence and when the wax dried it didn’t
leave a mark.
I was graceless and forgetful, you,
blameless and ritual in your deliverance
of breaths of life. Me, a golden ass doing my best
to suppress what interest I had in you,
but your persistent memory remembers
differently. You will be Psyche
with a mouthful of seeds, gathering
boxes of beauty for ashes, oil
for morning, oaks
for display. Labors Herculean in nature,
the flowers that bloom on your eyelids will not
impede your flight. You saw my wings
and assumed I was the god of affection, put down
the map, I don’t need
directions, because perhaps I was just Icarus, prideful and reckless, and you, the sun.