Hi everyone. My name is Hera. I am married to a sex addict with a God
complex. I should have known when he came at me as a cuckoo
he’d be peck, peck, pecking at my serenity from the start. Now,
who is the cuckoo? I endure it. Sometimes? I look the other way.
I feel powerless, yet I know he fears my rages.  I love him.  I loathe 
us. What a dilemma, right? And at my age.
 
God, grant me the serenity to change. The problem is he thinks
he’s omnipotent. I may be new at this, but I am learning that I cannot
expect him to behave. I can only alter my reaction to him.  I anticipate
the next affair, and what will he be this time? A dove, a swan, a bull,
a jackass? Why do I stay, why does he stray? Is it rude to ask a specific 
person this question. Hillary, what would you do?
                        

Something about the water, the smell of turtles,
or was it the river itself that called you back? Irises chatter
among themselves, captured by the flutter of dragonflies’ 
wings. I tear the cord from the soil hoping to summon you. 

In its bowl of water, it coils like a wild braid. We wait
for someone who never appears. Lily, in the glass bowl
murmurs all night, recalling dragons, a memory

of webbed-wings over her head, flashing eyes, blood-red
flight and only the tiniest glimpse of a hand with silver rings.
She counts torn clouds, surrounded by glass, a cord slinking over
the rim and back to the water meadows. I wonder where you've gone

banished or forsaken, in between bright sun and sooty wings.
I wonder if they’ve shattered you out of glass, stars burning on
my cheeks, water rushing back to water where lonely women weep.

Note: Eurynome was the third wife of Zeus. Eurynome nursed the god Hephaestus
beside the earth-encircling river Okeanos (Oceanus) after his fall from heaven.