I hardly think of him these days, except
when asked, or blamed he fell. the looks that say
“if only you had not rejected him.”
should I have shed my maidenhead for naught—
ope my lap, my heart, to golden showers
for fourteen measures of his ill-phrased lines?
and now I’m clept as chaste, as frigid? bound
for a nunnery? I play hard to get,
expect his chase— with love as strong as death—
to last beyond one song, and he exchanged
my cousin’s rose for mine? fuck that whiny,
inconsistent little bitch, and his three-
day bride! I was too fair, too wise by far,
and ‘scaped the passing fancy I thought love.

A sonnet first published in Teach. Write (Spring, 2019). And seriously, Romeo was a punk.