Idol Poem by Jacqueline Marcel Hawthorn

It’s time to return to that pedestal, where you still cling –
gripping, long-fingered, to the edges of my affection and smudging grey
shadows in the sunless white room. I throw open the blinds and turn to be rid of you
but scrape, graze and sever, it’s all in vain agony, to wretch you from the plinth
uses all of my strength, and I must sit for a while, not meeting your soulful cold eyes,
back straight against the wall, try to be strong, sit tall, don’t cry;
I rise once again and know that you’re watching me, I rip up old letters and
quietly set fire to them, I walk to the dais and hurl down dry flames
and they eat away at themselves like dogs or anxiety,
but still you’re unmoving, and mocking, and waiting, and just when I
feel the bile of despair rising, just when I think I’ll leave you residing
here, you make a question of my name -
and we sit for a while - you and I,
and talk about my affection, idolisation, hero-worship, glorification
of your imperfect body and your second-class mind, but
when I smirk at your flaws, perhaps cruel, you rise and shake hands,
fall away into ash, to be swept by the hearth,
another lost soul to meet in the dark.