Psyche’s House

When Psyche came to her new house, no one
but voices kept her company, kept set
and clean the feasting tables and perfumed basins,
the colonnades and treasure vaults without,
she was startled to see, any locks at all.

The voices tended her, too, after that
first night with her husband, also unseen
but embodied at least. Nobody really knows
the edges, feathered and a little flippant,
of a beloved in the early days.

Then, betrayal and trials. She will travel
pregnant to the underworld, instructed
to ignore the souls who surface from the river,
reaching lonely arms for help: they are traps
well set to take her down. And this is how

the story adapts such Herculean labors
to the girl named Soul—instead of killing monsters,
she must refuse her instinct to be kind.
She who, by then, has known the supernatural
kindness that happens when the world begins

each conversation as if it’s always known
its favorites, the human faces it comforts
with enchantment. She who, by then, has known
supernatural cruelties. Unlike, she thinks,
that house. Where she could see only herself.

There are times my husband and I get so that
we know each other mostly by evidence:
the dishes done, kids dressed, a window cracked.
The invisibility of coming to bed hours
apart awaits. “Whoever you are, I love

you deeply,” Psyche tells the shapely form
she’s certain of, despite her disbelief.