Room 102

I am not the woman they write poems about,
Not with honesty,
Not when I cancel out, with green, the rose-tint.
My skin, though pale, is not
The alabaster of words.

I am not the woman they write poems about;
Pablo could never have pictured me still,
Nor could fourteen lines of iambic pentameter
Capture any one metaphor that would leave
No need for others.

Immortalised though my name could be in ink,
Like Beatrice and Helen and Angela,
It would not be me; it would be no more
Than the fleeting thought of a romantic heart,
Sculpted into an approximate impression of
The woman they write poems about.

We are accused of offering up our souls to paper,
But, dyed as our words are with wishes,
These offerings can never not be fiction.
As my imagined personal poet Laureate writes of me,
I change desires myriad times,
Morph images a million more.

I am not the woman they write poems about.

None of us are.