The Wrong Man

A Bitterness For Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai: The Butterfly Lovers

How’s your life in a tomb?

Or are you living as a butterfly now

with him,

the husband you expected?

Bitterness clenches my heart as I recall that day

when you jumped into his grave –

an anguished sting to the man you left behind.

I felt the coldness and fright

and realized I had lost you,

my fiancé,

my never-to-be wife.

Your appearance constantly visits my mind

like a firefly languishing in an abyss.

It dances, swirls, and shines…

You ignited the midsummer night,

burning his heart but also mine.

How could you admire him, but be blind to me?

Now adoration and

resentment undulates.

It is said that a pair of lovers will die

to become butterflies,

to fly

to soar in their sky.

They leave sorrow behind them,

punctuated by the distant sound of their love

singing again and again…

What about the broken tomb?

The stone hit thunder hard but

who might ever care about its scar?

She didn’t.

She wouldn’t.

Perhaps she just couldn’t.

And so I ask now – will you, dear reader? Can you?