It was so easy, in Greece
to be 22 with you, fighting in the cobbled streets
while our landlady drank her ouzo and advised us
to marry already, for God’s sake

She should have convinced me that
happy women howl and hurl
Achillian sandals out of windows,
wear matching lingerie and say Hail Mary—
twice—
while turning the bed;

I could have learned the discipline of staying,
of shooing off the choir a woman hears
when she realizes she’s done better
than her savior.

I never told you: sometimes I’d wonder if vestal + virgin
was just another way of saying
you had me once, never again.

Men like you were made for growing old
on peninsulas, folk and fallow,
Byronic only because you share an appetite,
and penchant for cruelty.

We might have stayed and prospered.