Emilia Viviani

My dear Emilia, I have woken

ten times in the night

thinking of you–

but not of you. Thinking

of the sun. Thinking of the

Venus that I imagined you were.

Not the girl of nineteen I frequent at the convent.

I’m beginning to believe that

love doesn’t exist

in a pure form. Or if it does

it is an expression of the divine

that we splice onto the material…

now I can’t even look

at the poem I wrote for you because

you are nothing like that Emily 

So make no mistake.

When I say I do not love you,

I mean I love no one

Everyone else loves you.

The moon lends books to you

and makes pained small talk

Darling, no word exists

in the ineffective English language

for the feeling of love for something

you never loved. That simply became a 

temporary muse and a reflective canvas.

No word exists, but Epipsychidion comes close

Emilia, I loved you once

because you reminded me of myself.

Your enigmatic letters and preference

for meeting at midnight. I loved you 

once because you knew what freedom was

even if you could not achieve it.

I loved you once because you

were a puzzle I needed to solve

and failed continually to do so

But now I wonder

if that was a siren song. A friend said to me

(languidly–in the detestable style of men these days):

“Shelley, you don’t know what you have until it has gone.”

(Yours, &c.)