Your love, with anguish, shows me passageways,
To exit doors and places of escape,
That I may flee impending sorrow's scrape,
Against my heart-skin in the coming days.

But love's advice begins my own malaise,
I'm smothered as under a weighty drape.
My heart compressed then loses its true shape,
While trampled under words of your own phrase.

I'd live serenely separate from this pair,
You often warn so bluntly yet so coy.
The thought of this is more than I could bear.

I'd rather live in service to your care,
Caressing you through duty or through joy,
Than live on loveless in such deep despair.

(C)2014, Christos Rigakos