“Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Each of us, then, is a ‘matching half’ of a human whole…and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him.”
– Plato
Our spines fit together, like jigsaws, or fingers,
Bone settled gently against perfect bone.
My palm in your palm, where it lovingly lingered,
When I was still we, and you were my own.
Together we stayed, with no thought of leaving,
Joined, as we’d been, from the moment of birth.
Never alone, no sorrow, no grieving,
Perfectly one – the Children of Earth.
The gods looked down, unjustly haughty,
Never to know the things that we knew –
Their palace and powers were all for naught,
We had the great riches, you, I, and I, you.
And happy, below, we saw nothing wrong,
The Daughters of Earth, the Sons of the Sun.
But in the high heavens, with jealousy, bitter,
The gods looked down on the edge of a knife.
If they were our gods, of course they were better,
Then why did they yearn for our short mortal lives?
So, Zeus in his envy, and crackling wrath,
Came down from the heavens to tear us in two.
He darkened our eyes, and filled them with ash,
‘Til you didn’t know me, and I didn’t know you.
Yet still, when I sleep, I long and remember,
The feel of your skin, the press of your spine,
And wake and want, the dream turned to embers,
As I grieve in the echo of when you were mine.
And even with decades as One and not Two,
I wake with my fingers still reaching for you.
Insp. Myth of Aristophane
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