Summer, again.
The walls are closing in, again. And I cannot even talk to anyone. I need her so badly, but she’s half the problem. Maybe… less than half, to be fair. But this anger – it’s blinding me to everything. I’ll make a mistake, I know it; I’ll say something I don’t mean, don’t want to say. Yet all the knowing in the world is doing nothing to prevent the mistake I feel brewing somewhere in my gut.
And beyond her…
I’ll never get away, will I? I was such a fool, such a young fool. Thought it wasn’t so important, wasn’t so bad; I even enjoyed it, more often than not. I had no idea. No idea of consequences, of aftermath. What boy does?
“…you bastard knave! She had no choice,
she had no chance, nor had she voice
To find surcease for all she missed-
Twas fainting desperate lips you kissed!”
A terrible bit of doggerel from a truly awful play. Melodramatic, ham-fisted. Commoners marrying Dukes under assumed names. Only a member of the gentry would write such class-deaf nonsense.
But that stanza… Salestri sings it when he believes his childhood friend, Mell, has slept with the Duke as her only way to survive and then been thrown out into the streets afterward. That stanza – it’s the one part of the whole ridiculous play that rings true to me.
How little do people who have never truly wanted for the bare necessities understand desperation. How freely do they condemn what others do to survive, with no understanding of the luxury that allows them to speak.
I had no choice. I had no chance, nor had I voice.
Or is that simply how I choose to see it?
