Fire and Ice
Megan Kelleher

I drench my pillow with tears like the gods drench the night sky with stars My opprobrious lover does not flinch, so I turn my head away from his silent form and stare ahead into darkness as impervious as his heart.

I am supposed to understand why my dear Aeneas is unhappy and why abstract terms like “fate” and “destiny” mean more to him than I ever will. He will not tell me if anything has transpired, but a woman always knows when the man she shares her bed with no longer belongs entirely to her. He is on the precipice of a storm that will take him away from me forever, but I cannot pinpoint the shift in climate responsible for this approaching thunder. Rumor is the only ground with which I have to charge any transgressor of violating this romance. Without definite knowledge of its adversary, I cannot defend our love. So, I remain silent and let fine points like shrugs of his shoulders puncture holes in my heart.

My sobs temporarily suppressed through sheer will, I close my eyes and wonder how it is that I can be falling so deeply in love while he is so rapidly falling apart. I have been weak and alone for so long; perhaps I depended too much on his strength. I put him on a pedestal and consequently set him up to fail me, and it is in this failure that I now fear he will succeed. Something he believes is greater than us beckons, and I am afraid that I sense a remote willingness in him to give into these phantom proposals.

Suspicion and worry supplant every other waking thought in my mind. Imagined fulfillments of these emotional betrayals plague my dreams. I have given him all that I could possibly give, and it has cost me everything that I have spent my life as a sovereign ruler laboring to bring to fruition. My dignity, honor, and ability to live in a world without his affections have all been compromised; what, then, do I have left, if not the unconditional love of my Aeneas?

Cruel Rumor has infiltrated my castle, traveling on subtle winds created by the bated breaths of those whispering under doors and between cracks in the walls news of ships rigged for sail hidden in my harbor. Never have I been so numb as I was this day upon hearing the chilling news: Aeneas, my lover, has chosen a land he has never seen over me. Icy shock has since thawed and ignited into anger so torrid that betrayer and wronged lover alike will soon smolder in consequence.

My woes have become too much to bear in thought alone. I turn to face Aeneas, my sudden movement rousing him from his light slumber.

“You even hoped to keep me in the dark as to this outrage, did you, two-faced man, and slip away in silence?” I cry mournfully. “Can our love not hold you, can Dido not, now sure to die in pain? Even in winter weather must you toil with ships, and fret to launch against high winds for the open sea? Oh, heartless!” (Virgil 106).

Words continue to pour uncensored from my lips, each burning accusation providing fuel for the next. I speak of my secular sacrifices, my dissipated integrity, and the child I long for that he has not given me. My lover listens in silence as I ignite each grievance and heave them at him one by one, but his unflinching expression confirms my worst fear: it is only I whom the fire of these passions is burning.

I cease my pleas and wait for his justification. In my heart I know what to expect, but the vain hope of a desperate woman in love is strong enough to deny even the most obvious of
truths if they mean to break her heart.

The bedclothes we wrap around us are drenched in the scent of our recent sin, but his eyes meet mine and I need no words to tell me he is lost to me forever. He speaks gently of fate and the will of the gods, Italy and inevitability, and his unwavering duty to his people. I note with bitter admiration that he is gifted in the use of crafty clichés, clever clarifications, and all other manners of shrewd things lovers say when disassembling romance.
I continue to plead with him, but a dark solution surpassing argument both in power and ease is surfacing in my mind. I bolt from the room feeling as if I am wading through a nightmare, and as I begin to lose consciousness, I am enveloped in a conviction so full of bleak certainty that only the Fates themselves could have conceived it. Aeneas, my lover, the source of my life, is it any surprise to the gods that you will also be the source of my death?

I love a man whose heart is forever frozen by his destiny. I was foolish enough to believe the fire of my passion was enough to free him, but the snows of fate always came too soon and never melted fast enough. I welcome death with open arms, for I can no longer believe that anything beautiful in life can last forever.

Works Cited
Virgil. The Aeneid. Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York, NY: Random House Inc., 1981

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