House of the Dead III

27 February 2026

https://poems.culturing.net/2026/02/house-of-the-dead-iii/

Can I really descend once more into the house of the dead?
Can I really become a ghost again, and traipse my way
among corpses, forever adrift from the dying sun? Isis came,
and I should not have doubted, but why did she come?
Did she love, or did she merely want me to love?
To what purpose? To satisfy vanity, or maybe
to trigger growth, but the latter so closely resembles love
that I can't tell the difference. She put so much into it,
then stopped at a certain point, and plateaued.
This is no longer reciprocity, no longer evenly efforted.
Was it a trick? Was it not Isis at all, but some god
of deception, insulting me all the way? I have been mocked
back into living form, that's truth enough, and this prophecy
from years ago has come to pass. Although it did not last,
it held my face to a glass in which I see myself reflected
as a man who can do better, who deserves better, than phony love,
the art of loose and playful women. Sure, she knows how to read,
and that is rare enough, but if the heart is not tied to this skill,
then I will walk free, I will not bend the knee to a harlot
who truly deserves no such love. To have glimpsed her is enough,
even if a mirage from the sands of Egypt, even if she meant harm.
She has caused me grief but not so much grief that I am not stronger for it.
I doubt that she will ever reveal her hand, nor can I decipher
her intentions from a morass of clues. So it's time to move on.
But I will not return to the house of the dead. I will live,
in the sun, for the rest of my days.