I Ransomed my Life to be Free from Hers

Shakespeare

That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime.
O! that our night of woe might have remember’d
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender’d
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
    But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
    Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

The cruel moment finally arrived
When my once-friend
	Whose sadness I'd once felt
		As my arrow felled her
			Melting her steel nerves
			Its force
				Releasing her bonds
				Sacrificing her integrity
		Emerging from the flames of Time
			To pull me
				For a decade
			Enslave me
				To her torment
Thought I should suffer for her crime

So many nights with pain
	Quaking from the deepest point
Me trying to be tender
Her too tender to be worth trying

	Like beasts humbled
We would accept some salve

But her transgressions had a price

I ransomed my life to be free from hers

Will the world pay up?