Three Loves in the Senate

Chenrui Zhang

I.

He loved him like the son he would have had

if gods could be fathers. He watched him

in the Senate, marble-jawed, tight-hearted.

He wanted to give him everything: the crown,

his throat, the verb to love conjugated

in the imperative. He said the Ides of March

were a day, just a day, and he believed him

because to be believed was to be undressed.

He let him peel the purple from him. His poem

when it came, came as a three-word question

with a three-word meaning. Kneeling in his blood,

he thought, Close to me. Finally.

II.

He loved him like a statue loves the arm that breaks it.

A dead god is safer than a living one, he thought,

kissing his cheek in the market and feeling the future

wet on his lips. His was the sky, and he was the bird

sent to prove skies could bleed. Afterwards, he washed

his hands in his absence, still yet clean, still visited

by ghosts made of the light he put out. You will see me

at Philippi, he is told. I won’t see you anywhere, he thinks.

He would dig through the earth, dig back his words,

just to be seen by him again.

III.

He loved him when he was hungry,

when he was hunger. He wrote him

a new face in letters forged from fire,

because the old one only saw a man,

not a god, and he needed a god

to justify his kneeling. He gave him

the conspiracy like a bouquet,

which he took with both hands

without ever taking his hands.

He wanted to be loved like he loved

Rome. When the battle swallowed

the sky, he sent others to their deaths,

wishing to be the only death

he would mourn, to be the misread

signal, the scarlet thread pulled from

his chest. In a tent he bared his breast.

Strike. He pitied him, the unrequited love

of the brave. He fell on his sword,

his last word his name folded

into a small, wet animal that died

of waiting. He closed his eyes

without kissing them. Rome fell, and

he didn’t.

CHENRUI ZHANG is a top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2021, and was commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020. Chenrui is happy, and can be found on Substack @chenruiz.