What is love?
Murasaki would say it was an obligation,
a sort of duty
where the rules
say to bury one’s emotions
and succumb to the overpowering sex.
Mian Mian embraces the sexuality
of her culture. Arguing that love
is the force behind drugs and emotion.
It is not the government’s obligation
to dictate the author’s form of rules
on writing a novel that serves its own duty.
How does Black Jade feel about her duty?
Despite her lover’s sexuality
and his matriarch’s ruling
of marrying well even if he does love
her, the family cares more of their obligation
then of their prized sons emotions.
Coco lived by her emotions.
The sickness of Tian not her duty
as it would have been in the old days. Lui’s obligation
to turn in Shiba overruled by rough sex
and her quest for painful love
in a time that disregards all form of rule.
Peony was one who broke the rules
but was rewarded for it. Unless it’s Peony #2 because her emotions
got the best of her when she fell in love
at the wrong time. It was not her duty
to see the play nor feel anything sexual
in the Three Wives Commentary; this, her obligation.
Was it Abe Sada’s obligation
to castrate her lover and make her own rules?
Madame Mao too knew all about sex
and succumbed to her emotions
when her duty
was no longer to love.
From emotional red chambers with rules
on obligatory sex, the cycle of East Asian
love patterns has yet to fulfill its duty.