There was more
to the story and less
than
previously said.
The details
sometimes intrude on my reverie.
But shall
their baring bring respite now?
I rode back in
a daze from the forest of Compiegne.
in my boots
seeped blood profusely, crimson red.
But I was
confused thought it was the stallion who
rubbed me
against trees.as I been warned he would.
But was it out
of hubris or rider’s pride that
led me to
persist in this Amazonian dare?
In seeming
male allegiance with the stallion
the grooms
guffawed at my disheveled state.
As a guest at
the Chateau the situation was fraught
with awkwardness
it would be more prudent
to return to
Paris than being seen.
I attempted to cover drying blood on my
breeches
from prying eyes on train ride back to hotel.
Other thoughts
began to occur to me as
explanation
that cleared stallion of fault.
What was left
for me to do was to elaborate a new life
for the one
eschewed, which I had elaborately observed
played out by the blonde single mother in the Hotel
Montparnasse.
Searing pride
would not allow me to contact you then
though the
most joyous day of my life had been when
in a letter
you had offered to divorce your wife.
I ran to the
forest of St Germain nearby to read it alone
But I had not
heard from you in months and now?
How to forge a
new life without the life I thought I had.
On my return I
found your yellow roses in my room,
I had forgotten it was my 16th
birthday!
I strew them
around in a rage in a cloud of petals
but managed to
save a single one to press
in memory of
this day. I wonder if I have it still?
The pain is
mostly gone and I smile at my silliness now.
And wonder
whether it was necessary now to recall.
Did not tell
even you, for six more years and when I did,
you
wept. In the intervening years silence grew around
the subject
that I began to wonder if you had forgotten it,
or perhaps had
began to think it a fiction, not happened at all?
And even I,
began to doubt…
Antonia Baranov
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