Sometimes I wonder if you’re a mere figment of my imagination, for only beauty imagined can be so perfect, so uncompromising. I have been a dreamer, an actor in those dreams, a self-conceived hero of extraordinary comedies, but I had to yield to your magnificence, I could not help but dream of you, you who made me a dreamer in my dreams. I would be lying if I said I’m going to accept your frailties. No, I’m not. Yet I’m going to accept you, oh Abishag, my perfect queen.

For centuries I have been cold, the loveless winter refusing to relent, my world a foggy morning and my heart a drumbeat, waiting, ticking, for your warmth. You are the moon of my night, the wings of my flight.

You make me a fool, you make my past a careless indulgence, but for the dreams of a future with you I will kill the soul of my past. I have no cushions to rest my head upon, no bed of roses, no past so sanguine, but I sleep now in the sky upon the clouds of your breath. You have made me immortal.

Lie next to me, let me praise your beauty, awful, distant.

Let me drown in the sea of your hair, each thread worthy of my life. Let me live in the shadow of your eyes, cool and moist as a pacific breeze, protect me from the cruel harsh sun. Let me breathe in your breaths, and make me yours to the bone. I tremble to think of your lips, concealing a voice so criminal, breaking hearts as you break a tone. The light of your eyes petrifies me, my sight a slave to your wishes.

Why, my queen, can I not see anything but your face? I will not defile you, not even in thought, you who I enshrine.

Oh my king, your orders my fate-line, I protect you from the devil, from the stygian cravings of lust.

No, Abishag, I dare not the fire of your beauty, give me back my freedom, it is my humble demand.

You had to but think of it, my lord, here are your eyes, your thoughts no longer mine; but I warn you again, the flesh is a well full of waters of crime.

I dare not look into your eyes again, but my world is you, you are my vision, you are my choice. I choose to die in the desert of your body, drink myself to life at the oases that are your breasts. Marry me, queen, I beseech, I beg.

Oh king, against your blaze I cannot stand, but I cannot bear the wrath of the Gods, the scorn of the eighteen to whom you have been sworn.

Let them marry the blade of my sword, mightier than the bolt of Zeus. Between your thighs lies my salvation, and I won’t spare the Gods that come between us. Come Abishag, resurrect my desires!

Order of the lord I cannot contravene, but the fires of consummation are the fires of hell, they will engulf you, they will cauterize your soul, brand you a sinner, and repent you will alone.

I care not, I wish to live the future that killed the soul of my past. Come to my embrace, these ephemeral pleasures are the reasons of my life, of a game well played, of an end that breezes into a new start… Alas! The sting was too harsh, the heat of lust a heat too hot. I’m not immortal, but the seeds of life I have cast.

Oh my king, lured and lost, fated to the same end, chasing a foolish cause. But the seeds will live, and the throne will be mine, my son a weapon of vengeance, a slave forever, performing a pantomime. Just like his father.