Author’s Note
In this Villanelle duet, Eira Linden and I explore the quiet violence of constraint and the stubborn refusal to stay silent.
Eira’s “Pink Rusted Hierarchies” is a strict, classical Villanelle that lays bare the beige lethargy of male-dominated worlds.
My “The Boy in My Heart” is a hybrid Villanelle that bends the traditional form using my reverse-constraint technique. It gives voice to the persistent inner boy who refuses to be erased by the masks, performances, and rules the adult world demands.
— UpsilonA & Eira Linden
I. Pink Rusted Hierarchies
by [Eira Linden]
Woman among rusted hierarchies
The carpets breathed a beige lethargic sheen
Against male and stale
I learned diplomacy through injuries
Through swallowed retorts polished bright and clean
Woman among rusted hierarchies
The senior men wore confidence like keys
Heavy as pocket watches, cold as steam
Against male and stale
Each meeting fed upon my energies
Their praise arriving barbed and serpentine
Woman among rusted hierarchies
I watched them build entire mythologies
From mediocre thoughts and golf routines
Against male and stale
Still I survived their tired monopolies
Lipstick blazing radioactive pink
Woman among rusted hierarchies
Against male and stale
II. The Boy in My Heart
by [UpsilonA]
I have a boy in my heart and he won’t go away.
He wakes at dawn and carries through the day,
head full of spaceships and dreams and hidden queens.
Blank faces screeched. No way to stay.
Unbend the thread, unslip the hook — against the eyes of those that look.
Until he found books.
Thought him lost, gone astray…
he’d found a different way.
Deeper, emotionally intelligent, and socially irregular.
The rules of the grown and the dull had their say.
He never stopped to think of the ask
before the world forced him into a mask.
Maintained. Evolved. Adjusted. Every day.
The performance perfect — a quiet decay.
Inside the mask — entirely unseen.
He keeps trying to come back, to run and play.
I try not to let him have his day.
I have a boy in my heart and he won’t go away.
The world kills the boy and won’t let him stay.
What a powerful and brilliant piece !!!!
I've been looking forward to this. YAY! So interesting to pair them.