Blueberry Muffins & Don Quixote

                                          
[image created by QUIXOTEdottv @ zazzle.com]

This poem was inspired by Fireblossom's poem Sunday Bookstore Cafe, about a blueberry muffin and the loss of love. A universal theme, it appears :)

I am re-posting it here in response to Mary's Mixed Bag challenge today at Real Toads : to write a poem that includes a conversation. This one sprang to mind.


He was addicted to
beginnings,
to conquest,
to the thrill of the chase.
He had perfected
the bedding of women,
the cute little schticks,
the crafted phrase,
the poetic verbiage.

She was a romantic
whose life had held
precious little romance.
She had been alone,
it seems,
forever.
She felt like
the Dickensian  character
sitting in her parlor
draped in cobwebs
waiting for the phone to ring.

Alas! they found each other.

He believed he was
Don Quixote,
always off on a quest.
He wooed her wary heart
with words of forever,
cajoled her past her fear
with honeyed phrases.
Her heart, starved for love,
for romance,
for this to be true,
responded
while her Inner Wise Woman
was thrown into fearful panic
and did not feel safe.

Her head, however,
refused to listen
as the ground shifted
beneath her feet
and she clung on.

He spoon-fed her promises
and butterscotch pudding.
To others,
he said he was
"keeping his options open".

Too soon
he grew bored.
She had toppled too easily.
She wasnt "playing the game",
her sister said.
Confused, she replied,
from her honest heart
"I dont play games."
"More's the pity,"
said her sister.

On the side, he was already
lining up
the next glorious
breathtaking
adventure.
There were two women
in his sights.
He "kept his options open"
in case one of them
didn't work out.
To her,
he said,
he was "confused."
He "needed time."
Then, he must "follow his truth."

He dumped her on Valentine's Day.

And she?
About to go into
the full-blown shock
of betrayal,
devastation,
and, quite soon,
some healthy
invigorating anger,
before she left
she made him a batch
of her wicked blueberry muffins,
to remember her by,
because he'd
"miss her muffins".

Good God.

She'd never see another
blueberry muffin
without an ironic
grimace,
the thought of him
bumbling about
the scattered
landscape of love,
tilting his sword
at all the pretty ladies.