We end the first day of the WPD 2022 Series with a poem in which we are given a perspective from either of the famous twins of Greek Mythology—Castor and Pollux. The twins are known for their inseparability and kinship to the extent that neither of them is able to live without the other. That being said, this poem goes in depth into the admiration and yearning for the other that, much like their bond, transcends our own understanding. In this piece, we feel various emotions from the melancholy of having lost and found our other half, the anguish of having to live without them, and the all-encompassing love we have for them that fuels our longing.
Castor and Pollux
by Anonymous Contributor
There are no reflections or remnants of you
When I look at murky waters or through dusty windows
Especially at night. Of course at night, when everything
Passes and does not stay in what vague memory
Mapping out stars nightly has left other than their shadows.
While those poisonous powdered pink plumerias
Start to bloom in all its nocturnal possibilities
I try to paint your portrait and look at the mirror, myself
How I diminish into a shadow and split into your likeness
We share everything: arch of eyebrows, echoes of laughter,
Then tenderness, then blood, except fathers.
*
To what extent do I have to place my future in your embers
We took our first breaths together
Which mine will eventually turn into a faint
Breeze. You pleaded to Zeus, your father
whose hands and phallus lingered to places
it blasphemed: Like Mother, like that time
when he turned into an elegant swan to lure her.
Then, she swam into his amorous desire that bore you:
Immortal creature in that futile body
*
Nightly, we move through the air
As balls of gas passing through spaces
Like clustered fireflies or slow shooting stars
In search of a wish or a promise,
Perhaps memory to make my burning
Endless; burn without losing this luster.
