Her Emptiness

Dedicated to C.M.
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When she was just a girl, a doctor opened her door.
It was a door to a passage she could walk through if she desired.
(She desired.  Desire has always been her song.)

So, she bravely walked into a room she did not know existed,
    an empty room,
    a room in need of furnishing,
    an vacant room that needed filling…

Or maybe it was a volcano,
    the inside of a volcano.
Yes, it had to be a volcano.
Nothing else quite makes sense.
No other analogy will do quite as well.

Her physician poured his heat into the volcano,
    the volcano that is now who she is,
    a volcano that is never dormant.

When I first met her,
    I did not know she was aware of empty rooms.
She was too young to know of such things…
    so I thought.

I certainly did not imagine she was
    a Vesuvius walking about on petite adolescent legs.
I should have realized she was a volcano
    because her face was always on fire,
    and her lively eyes bore fissures into my being
    like rivers of fire running through me.

She confused and excited me,
    startled me because she was so young.

No man is so empty as he who once thought himself full,
    and no woman is as full as she who senses the promise of her womb.
I was just a young man then, empty and maimed
    for the first of many times—she was still younger,
    used to unfurnished wombs, unfilled rooms.

She did her best to cure this Fisher King.
Allowing her only one session,
    I even prescribed the treatment.
Enraged, I bit her to the bone when the cure did not take.

She ran away,
    limped down those stairs,
    wondering how she should have treated my wound.
I knew I’d never see her again.

I wanted her to know I was no king,
    just a dog,
    just a Fisher King dog that had to cure itself.
Nothing, not even the force of a volcano, could have cured me then.
I was too proud for that.
I am still too proud for my own good…hubris and all that.

A third of a century later, she found one of my poems and contacted me.
An old man now,
    I finally was able to tell her that I always loved her,
    and she was able to proclaim that she still loved me.

As they say, “Better late than never.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The old Fisher King walks down the sidewalk,
    his trick knee buckling at unexpected times under his weight.
He thinks of her emptiness, the emptiness of her room and her volcano.
She thinks he still has the shape that can fill that eternal emptiness.

As he walks, the old man thinks to himself,
    “If she believes I can, then perhaps I still can.”

Putting his hands into his pockets,
    he adjusts himself as he strides.

She healed him after all.