a_troubadour_sings_of_a_chivalrous_heart ovenbird This is what it means to be lonely: to plant your feet on land eaten by darkness, the heart, with its dim and undefined geography, searching for an obscure horizon. She swallows all her words, speaking only a yearning that sounds like the ocean at the back of her throat. When he comes to stand beside her she takes him for a prince, because that’s what she’s been told to expect—a man rich in lands and rich in dress and rich in things he can possess, everything polished to gleaming. He wraps himself in the illusion of grandeur, hoping it will buy him time to reveal the gold seam of his soul. She walks with him a while until she finds he has no royal title and no wealth with which to keep her. He has nothing in his pockets so he is nothing in her eyes. Believing herself duped, she breaks his heart and castrates his soul and leaves him wandering the earth with a dragon coiled in his chest. He can’t see his own worth because she’s holding it hostage. This binds him to her. She keeps a piece of him for herself. He mistakes the ache of what is lost for love, his soul aligning to the cruel magnetic north of her face. He would sacrifice himself for one who doesn’t even know his name. Though she has taken as much of him as she can carry and though she has yielded not a scrap of affection in return he comes to her in her need, when the world is all monsters that she’s failed to tame, and her life hangs in the balance. Everything is suspended above a pit of fire and he draws his sword to fight for her on the precipice of hell. He unleashes the dragon that wakes in his chest and it enters the fray with its song of flame only to be slain by the first stroke of an enemy broadsword. The man feels this essential piece of him die and stands still and bereft as the war rages around him. Is there anything left of himself to give? He finds there is, and he will give it, though the woman he loves won’t understand the extent of his gift. When the battle is over, he stands with his bloodied sword and lets the last of what he is fall from his hands. “I love you,” he says in a voice diminished by all that has been taken from him. When he walks away he carries only rage. She doesn’t follow. She keeps what he’s given, his love and his loyalty and his vulnerability and his friendship. She keeps it for herself, leaving him to piece himself back together from the dust of grief. 251210 what's it to you? who go blather from