Burnt Offering

 

by Brett Rutherford

Anacreon, to Harmodius:

About that letter, the fervent one,

the one you hinted you’d sell

unless I enriched your coffers —

you mocked its shaky autograph,

and threatened a scandal —

I know your threat is false.

Last night in my sleep I saw

your hands on a crumpled scroll,

the thrust toward a sputtering lamp,

the tiny screams as my words,

my awesome and unrepeatable vows,

my praise of your unworthy beauty,

collapsed and withered in a blue-green flame.

You brushed the ashes from your gentle arms —

they scattered, mingled with dust motes,

rode a moonbeam in a moment’s leap

toward ghosthood, then dissipated.

Only one moth, before its suicide,

dipped in the ash and shared

one final taste of my missive.

No Phoenix rose, the earth

did not open to swallow you,

and your disdainful triumph

did not diminish the cosmos.

Yet he who burns love-letters

offends the Gods.

You dare undo my holy madness

with your little hecatomb

of paraffin and oil?

They will come back to sting you,

my salamander syllables.

Try and love anyone now! Your sunken cheeks

and pale complexion will drive all away.

All will know you are pursued and haunted.

You will wish you had kept the living scroll

when you see how Love, an ash-faced Fury,

comes back from Acheron,

a broom-hag to drive

your other suitors off,

nightmare’s bedmate, engendering

alarming sores and bruises,

leaving you spent and exhausted

as though a nest of incubi

used you to train their young.

You gloated first, I had composed

a shameful letter, and I would pay.

But when you learned

my missives wind up

in the best anthologies,

you gloated again

to burn it.

In vain,

your destruction of evidence.

You see,

I always keep a copy.

— Revised 2026.