Adonis and Aphrodite

 

You are my Adonis;

rippling, marble body

perfect in its beauty.

I am hardly Aphrodite –

more like Medusa –

withering stares turning everyone to stone.

 

But you,

master of perfection,

your gaze shatters my stone prison –

makes me feel like that Goddess who loved Adonis and no other

without heartache for losing him

after warning him not to hunt one day.

Just one day.

 

Like I beg you to be careful

when you do what you do when you do what you do.

I am forever fretting that I will weep over your broken body one day, too.

 

That would kill me.

 

For the little resemblance my face holds to Hers,

I am nothing like her, at all, in immortality.

But you –

you are Adonis in every way but name

and I shall play your fool –

divine comedy –

Aphrodite in my dreams,

or in the forest,

anywhere you rest your beautiful head.

R. L. Elke

© Aug 5/17 prompt 15