in her palm it rested,
portal to every love
her lips could discover.
she texted back,
“come over, i need you”
and grinned at
the heart reply.
in her palm it buzzed
gently; twenty other suitors
pried.

as she basked
in their adoration,
in her palm it glowed,
brighter, brighter,
blinding.
so bright it became
audible, loud and
awful. her grip
tightened, her nails
pressed through the screen,
into each of their minds;
she drank deep of lives
she never lived.

an overwhelming sense of
underwhelming love
in her modern pantheon of
misunderstood wooers
and she was their muse;
her golden laurel glimmered
with the discarded cores of men
and women alike
were what sustained her,
though tears ran down her face
to the insistent beat of
why, why

the soft tinkle of waiting faces
held between the limbo of
‘unread’ and ‘read’
in her carefully constructed temple
of would-be heroes and damsels
trying to save her heart;
what would a sword know about
leaving people waiting –
is that too close a question
to one’s heart, she wondered.

This is part 1 of 5 in a collaboration done with my dear friend, gliitchlord, circa 2018.