Forbidden Love
Have you forgotten Eleanor Rigby?
Then step up, meet me now, for I am she.
How many weddings have I attended
where it seems a war has been suspended?
For but a few moments, these happy pairs
enjoy their lives as if they have no cares.
I picked up the rice at each wedding,
asking myself why I was attending.
Perhaps just to see our priest once more
Father McKenzie, whom I adored.
There’s no doubt that my passion was true
and that he, surely, must love me too.
So bury me now along with my name
in the cemetery’s corner of shame.
Resting in shadows, our graves can be found
with just two small headstones marking the ground.
Are you one of the lonely like us?
Do you sit alone with no mates to discuss
the remains of the day, two lives not shared?
For the good priest and I never dared
to open our hearts to both joy and pain,
leaving us solitude filled with disdain.
* Written 8/16/2019 for Jerry T. Curtis’s “Eleanor Rigby, Who Was She” poetry contest
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