Bovary's Ballad

To be a woman within earthly realms,

The curves of your existence leave gods overwhelmed.

To be a woman who dares to dream,

Controlled by an alien whose imagination bleeds into screens.

O, your feminine heart! It aches with desire,

O, your feminine heart! No lover will it ever inspire.

So you retreat within the ballroom of your mind,

In a lonely affair, you dance to the choir.

You awake after you set fidelity upon a pyre,

Next to you, a man says, “How full of fire!”

“O my feminine heart! What is it you conspire?”

But your heart, it pleads, “my soul, it ascends higher!”

That stolid serenity that lies at home

Though well-intended, made you feel alone.

French-paneled walls that made up this dome,

Arrested the fantasies in your mind that built their throne.

Try as you might and ignore them, but such visions are set in stone.

Tucked away within the doors and narrow hallways,

Through the playgrounds of your heart, they always found a way.

Racing alongside the blood in your vessels, with swiftness, they ran,

They prayed to a neon god and hoped one day you would understand,

Like raging lust within your realms, fulfillment is what they demand.

In your daydreams, they chant, “Your path we command.”

Diaphanous gowns that kiss your skin and literature in your hand,

O, your feminine heart! For you, nothing could ever be too grand —

But o, my feminine heart! This world is not what it seems,

The mediocrity it holds leaves no space for dreams.

But every now and then I will go looking for such schemes,

Which frees me from the stolid serenity I find at home and its dull regimes.

That placid immobility of his, another man surely redeems,

Within his walls is a dormant spirit, but my heart, for more it beams

She was a woman within earthly realms,

Painted with the vision of a god overwhelmed

She was a woman who fulfilled her desires,

She was a woman, and everywhere she went, a lover was inspired.

She was a woman who took control of her empire,

She is a woman reunited with the skies, where she directs the choir.

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Edited by: Ava Emilione