Cuius Culpa?
Egon Schiele, self-portrait, 1910
Courtesy of the Albertina Museum, Vienna
This is an apology
an official one
to all those ladies
(the three or four...)
to whom I promised too much
and delivered too little.
Am I guilty of
fabrication or
dissimulation or
misrepresentation or
or any of those other heavy nouns
that creep into our language?
Yes and no.
I wanted you to take flight with me
in a way you had never done before
I pumped up my chest,
rehearsed my discourse,
sought out my sexiest socks.
But I fell short in my propos.
Perhaps, I didn't love you enough.
Perhaps, I loved myself too much.
Perhaps, you didn't love me enough.
Perhaps, you loved yourself too much,
Perhaps, other winds were stirring that neither of us could comprehend.
All this conspires to turn the simplicity
that we seek in our relationships
into the complexity that we reap.
This is not a plea for monogamy.
I do not wish that we retreat into small spaces,
fugitives from love and affection.
We need one another,
but this requires a penchant
for tolerance and understanding
that few of us discover
until we are so old and wise
that it is too late.
Click here to read in Spanish
