there is an old persian legend of a man who falls in love with a woman and goes insane when he cannot have her. even after she is married to someone else, he spends his days composing love songs in the dirt, building sandcastle hearts just to watch them collapse again when the tide rolls back in.
years pass, and the girl never writes anything back. i still wonder if she was ever given the chance to.
i was twenty-seven when i learned that you could fashion a stethoscope out of a cassette tape, broadcast the sounds of your heart to a double guitar riff that screamed desire. you pressed play and in an instant, i was priest to your deepest confessional.
i never asked about how you looked at me on the days that my husband was too busy finding god to join me in bed at night. i never wanted to know that you sinned in the color of my eyes. i never thought i’d be remembered for the moment that i traded krishna for *******, and the thousand days that followed:
day 176: we mix love and self-destruction in an old hotel room until they go down my throat as easily as sweet red wine. day 472: you turn watching me get ready for a party into an excuse to make love to my reflection with the windows open. day 894: you spend the entire morning restringing your guitar but i can still recognize another woman’s voice in its tone. day 1000: i loved you but never had the instruments to prove it.
we’ve both realized that obsession is a drug best left to legend.
to this day, they still call me the greatest muse of rock and roll, but each switch of the radio dial is just another reminder that i once tasted like music in the mouths of men, that their words built me up like a flower-child mona lisa in all the permanence of three minutes of vinyl, that though i inspired the most beautiful lyrics ever written about love, they never called me onstage to sing them.
i was once told that if you love a woman to the point of madness, she will become it. but any insanity i have remains etched on the insides of my veins; i walk beaches now, much too old for sandcastle-building.
years pass, and the girl has never written anything back. i still wonder if she will ever be given the chance to.
even the world’s greatest muses sometimes want to hold the pen.