These are the forces we had ranged within us

No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we’re not heroines, 
they happen in our lives like car crashes, 
books that change us, neighborhoods 
we move into and come to love. 
Tristan und Isolde is scarcely the story, 
women at least should know the difference 
between love and death. No prison cup, 
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape – recorder 
should have caught some ghost of us: that tape – recorder 
not merely played but should have listened to us, 
and could instruct those after us: 
this we were, this is how we tried to love, 
and these are the forces we had ranged within us 
within us and against us, against us and within us. 

From 21 Love Poems by (XVII) Adrienne Rich

Painting by Elisabeth Slettnes