Pale days had long begun to stretch out
Until an effigy in motion forgot
About weeks and hours and better days
Without the tedious dinners for one.
The wife failed to see, as wives often do,
Frailties writ large across a husband’s heart,
Or maybe she’d believed since a little girl
In her man would beat a heart of steel.
Meanwhile,
To an unsouled effigy
It would all have been the same
To her, to me, and to all the others.
I might have persisted a while longer,
If I hadn’t had to decide,
How best to escape
The confusion of being a man.
Odysseus sacrificed to souls grown pale,
Bored with life in the world to come,
A drop of blood, an offering of life.
What else is an effigy to do?
* * *
Using “effigy” to represent depersonalization, and in this case depersonalization as a prelude to cutting my wrists, is courtesy of “Tranz” by Gorillaz.
