Mild Bitterness

20 April 2026

https://poems.culturing.net/2026/04/20/mild-bitterness/

She offers the promise of an easy release,
unlimited and with no prerequisites. He obliges
and loses himself in himself, in the part of himself
that craves love. He's bewitched. Now his manhood
slowly must fade. Now he falls into darkness,
his own darkness, but a darkness that good women
help him avoid. But true strength grants him courage
in the midst of even this strangest temptation.
It allows him to sail on through. He must
hold on to all that is his. He must not surrender it
even for the sweetest love, or the sweetest illusion
of love. He prefers the bitter taste of the real thing.

But he cannot repress this desire without self-injury.
Instead he must guide it toward healthy love,
the kind that will strengthen both parties, the kind
that he wanted all along.