The Meaning of Failure

You know I sleep with you clasped to my heart every night, don't you understand? Whose failure this is, I cannot say!

We haven't spoken in so long, and touching, holding—forget about all that;
Yet here you are, sitting beside me, parting my hair with your fingers, and whispering in my ear...
Those things, all those things you always say...
You're saying them now.

I feel everything, see...see how you just touched me, see how my tears have soaked your chest...
Can't you sense it?
I don't know who to blame for this failure.

Look, my days and nights and years slip by as I keep watching the road for you, they just keep slipping away, yet I never catch sight of you; look, this love I've saved up for you—I can't give it to you, love that could have made you feel a little better; look, I can't even speak a few words like a friend while stroking your back...
I mean, you never have the time, never feel like it either!

Fine, I accept that you don't feel like it. Maybe you just don't!

This person who has abandoned all her urgent work, her grooming, her friends, relatives, her household—all for you alone—where you found the audacity to ignore her, I'll never know.

This boundless love of mine, this heart full of waiting, this longing to wrap myself around you—you brush past it all...perhaps you don't know this is called failure.
This failure is entirely yours, yours and yours alone.
These petty, absurd reasons why society won't accept our love—accepting society's rules and conditioning yourself to them—that's the collective failure of you and your society.

But this madwoman who shows her middle finger to you and society, who looks only at you, who grows pure through loving you like taking a daily dip in the Ganges, who accomplishes the hardest tasks just by gazing at your face, who draws you even closer in your absence, who gradually absorbs you into herself—that's called fulfillment.

Listen well: failed people like you and your failed society can never look me in the eye, can never suppress my love! This joy, this peace, this success, this pride, this heaven, this achievement—belongs to madwomen like me. All this fulfillment is mine, mine alone.