Dreaming of Naxos

It’s like you’re living in a cage and

You’re pulling at the reins

Chomping at the bit, trying to get out, out, out---

But you are your father’s perfect daughter

Demure and unsure, without

An ounce of courage to her bones.

He doesn’t realize what he’s getting when he goes away for business and he leaves you home alone.

You talk behind his back to the people he’s forgotten

The cleaners and the workers that can’t just drop

It all in a fit of rage and

Try to make the world pay and you don’t

Resent the inventor that gifted him the key to this labyrinthine enterprise your

Father founded to make a fortune and fill the void from the

Wife that left him for a

Beast of a man and the

Death that wrecked him when

His only son died leaving him the

Daughter he neglected when

All he wanted was revenge and to forget.

You resent and you remember and you simmer quietly until

One day he brings in a group of young entrepreneurs and

It’s like every year before

They show up with bright eyes and ideas until

They get lost in your father’s maze of a

Business and

They leave feeling dead to the world, but---

Something’s different.

One looks at you.

He’s young and handsome and

There’s nothing you can do against his

Quick wit and

His bone to pick with the man who’s left

So many of his friends to be devoured

By the world again and again

And for the first time someone sees you and

He promises to free you, to

Take you from this aching place and its haunted walls, so

You show him how to cut himself free from the traps and

Unravel your father’s tricks until he snaps and when he leaves...

He takes you with him.

But you knew your whirlwind romance didn’t have a chance if you had

Nothing left to offer so you

Release a breath because it doesn’t seem

Quite like the surprise it ought to be when he

Leaves you behind because

You can’t be trusted not to betray him and then

It’s all you can do to breathe as he walks away.

It’s lonely now without a comfort to fall back to in

This isolating world in which you find yourself

But for the first time

There’s no one that you’ve lied to and you’ve

Reached the end of the rope that you’ve always

Been tied to

Pulling tighter around your neck all your life like

Hope as it’s strangled by every bit of strife until you can’t

Cope, can’t breathe, but it’s over now; you’re free and

Maybe it’s crazy to say you love the isolation, but
If so, you might as well be married to madness because

There’s no one left to care how this story ends and try to

Send a message through your life like a lesson

You’re in control of the choices you make and

You can breathe and leave the

Lonely role you’ve always played because there’s

No one left to wonder at what

Is “doomed” to be the 

Fate of poor, imperfect Ariadne.