This and that
In the blush of new vows, beneath a veil laced with disdain,
She rose like a queen in her freshly forged reign.
Arrogant bloom in a garden of friends, ever keen
To please them with wit, lest their favor should wane.
Not one word to offend, no ripple to mar their delight
Yet her tongue, sharp as thorns, turned upon her own knight.
“Oh, bless his dull heart,” she would trill with a glittering laugh,
“How he stumbles through ledgers, how he snores like a calf.
Men are but props in our liberated play
See how I rule him, yet stand independent and gay!”
Her friends sipped their secrets, eyes veiled in polite disguise,
Their marriages rooted in quieter skies.
They nodded and chuckled, safe in their long-harvested peace,
While she carved at his pride for their fleeting applause, piece by piece.
He bore the bright barbs with a smile cracked and thin,
As her pride danced for approval, chasing their spin.
Each jest was a chisel, each laugh a small blade,
Till the marble of marriage in silence decayed.
The ring slipped like sand through her arrogant grasp,
The papers arrived cold, sealing vows to the past.
She lost him, the husband she publicly shamed
While her friends’ unions endured, unmarred and untamed.
Now silence descends like a frost on her door.
Invitations grow scarce; group whispers no more.
Her calls echo hollow through corridors bare,
Her friends drift like leaves on a wind of cold care.
They shield their own husbands with courteous shields,
Afraid of her influence, her mocking that yields
Only ruin and regret in its arrogant wake
A plague they would spare from their own hearths’ sake.
“She pleased us too dearly,” they murmur in shaded retreat,
“Her fire consumed what she claimed was her seat.”
Alone in the echo of laughter once sown,
She clutches the crown of a queen overthrown.
For pride, when it sharpens its wit on love’s breast,
Cuts deepest the hand that once held it in jest.
She traded her union for friends’ fleeting cheer,
And watched, in the ruins, her arrogance clear:
The circle she courted now circles away,
Protecting their gardens from her withering sway.
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