Sestina

So, this is a sestina I wrote. For more information on the rules that apply to sestinas, go to this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sestina

Sestina

Seven years ago, there was a marriage:
in the backyard he held her soft white hand.
They bought a house and she painted the walls
a buttery yellow. They saved their dimes
for a someday baby. She wore his ring.
She laughed often, her mouth turned toward his kiss.

Gradually, after each soft white kiss,
she began to curse her vows, her marriage.
Resentment, like a worm--ring upon ring--
grew, until it diseased her heart and hand.
He gave her dollar bills but got back dimes.
(She fooled him by painting those yellow walls.)

She deceived him outside those guilty walls,
laid with other men, took another's kiss.
Her husband, at home, still saved up his dimes,
holding sacred the vows of his marriage.
In bed, at night, he kissed her soft white hand,
not knowing that she had tarnished that ring.

Though she wore it, she did not love her ring.
She loved the house and she hated its walls.
Her ring she thought too cheap for her soft hand.
In her guilt, she shrank from her husband's kiss,
remembering the day of their marriage.
So she divorced him and claimed half his dimes.

With no baby and his diminished dimes,
with no wife and a meaningless gold ring,
with a broken heart and dissolved marriage,
he cried soft, white tears on the yellow walls.
Like Jesus, he was betrayed by a kiss
in that backyard, holding her fickle hand.

He stopped crying then, and lifting his hand,
brushed away his soft tears. They shined like dimes.
He wiped his mouth clean of that Judas' kiss,
and in his desk drawer he placed his gold ring.
Only love, he said, will live within these walls.
And that thought restored his faith in marriage.

True marriage relies on a faithful hand;
his faith grows like ivy on walls, shines like dimes,
rings true, like bells do, for an eternal kiss.

-Clare Brewer 3/26/08