Remember, not one man in the room wished him undone
or misremembered the service he had done the state.
Even now viewers love jailhouse correspondence,
the soft promise of a conjugal visit won upstate.
In Cyprus, he would have found another easily,
with his glory and his tragic eyes, alone in state.
I can be glad he chose me like a flower from the corner stall,
before that moment, I did not imagine marriage to one of state.
I quickly learned to keep a tight bud of my heart,
blossoming too quickly will cause a rotten state.
Every gristly killer keeps a file of letters from the women
who have fallen for his charms while he is within the state.
And no one thought of him as murdering,
he was a hapless, loving man unconscious of his state.
And besides, he was a man of military rule,
busy with the deeply secret motions of the state.
Violence must come to him more easily,
having seen what he had seen but couldn’t state.
I was convinced, or didn’t need to be,
that one sole act was not the measure of a man’s state.
I could be more careful, his sad eyes told me he had learned,
he could love again and withstand the state.
Women will love a wronged man, believe our
love will be the one that rights Othello from his state.
Elizabeth Sylvia is a writer of poems and other lists who lives with her family in Massachusetts, where she teaches high school English and coaches debate. Elizabeth began submitting poems for publication in 2018; her work has been featured in Literary Mama, Noctua Review, and Off the Coast. She has work upcoming in RHINO and Main Street Rag.