Janus

To my Janus, the Roman god of paradoxes, whose heart I could never decipher, a presence in my life both loving and hateful, I stand lost in the spaces between your faces, never knowing if I am loved or abandoned, if your touch is tender or if it is a slow, deliberate burn. Was there love or hatred for me in your heart, or perhaps both entwined in a single breath? In your dual faces, I searched for truth, only to find an endless dance between affection and cruelty, leaving me forever lost in the thresholds you guard.

In a world where mortals fell for deities,

Where Jupiter, Neptune, and Apollo

Wove their loves into fleeting myths,

Why, Janus, was it my fate to fall for you?

Why do you haunt the thresholds of my life?

Every doorway—your silent silhouette stands.

Each passage blurred—

Is it a beginning or an end?

A step forward or the point of no return?

Always in transition, always unknown,

And always you.

A road to nowhere that becomes a purgatory,

Where it’s just me and you.

Or perhaps, just one of me and two of you.

For you are never alone.

Both of your faces speak to me, always at once.

One whispers tenderness,

The other spits venom.

One lures me with kindness,

The other stings with disdain.

One beckons me to safety,

The other dares me to burn.

One holds the flicker of love,

The other smolders with hate.

One tells me to seek safety,

The other beckons me to walk straight into the flames.

One feels like he could love me,

The other seethes with hate.

One of you lies and the other speaks the truth,

But always at the same time,

Making me lose my mind.

And I never know which one of you I’m facing.

Never know where I stand,

Which gaze meets mine today—

The one that heals or the one that wounds.

One voice lifts me with gentle truths,

The other breaks me with sharp-edged lies.

And you shift so quickly,

The whiplash of your paradoxes

Threatens to tear me apart.

Some days, you lift me with your praise,

Other days, you cut me down with your scorn.

And you shift so fast—

From healer to tormentor,

From savior to destroyer—

That my heart struggles to keep up.

Do you see it, Janus?

Do you feel how fractured you are?

You are not one man,

But two souls bound in battle.

Do you see yourself for what you’ve become?

Not one man, but two,

Locked in a battle you cannot end.

The same hands that rescue me

Are the ones that push me under.

The same lips that murmur "stay"

Shout "leave" the moment I try to breathe.

And I just stand quietly with melancholic eyes as you argue among yourselves.

The same hands that pull me from the abyss

Push me back to the edge.

The same lips that call me “worthy”

Condemn me in the next breath.

You are chaos embodied,

A storm that does not know how to settle.

Will I ever know where I stand with you?

Will I always be a wanderer in this maze

You’ve built around me,

A maze of your contradictions,

Where hope and cruelty blur together?

Why do you caress my cheek one moment,

Only to press your hands around my throat the next?

Why must I live in this constant state of war,

Caught between the halves of you?

And no matter how I try,

No matter how I bleed or break to please you,

Your other face always steals my joy.

Your paradox consumes me.

Why do you hold me here?

If you hate me,

Why not let me leave in peace?

Why do you wrap me in tenderness,

Only to tighten your hands around my throat?

I wish I could ask the face that despises me—

What sin did I commit to earn your hatred?

But I know better now.

I should have learned to slip quietly past your shadow,

And stop looking back at the doorways you guard.

And yet, why is it that anytime I pass through hallways,

Doorways, and arches,

My heart still searches for you?

You, who are so easily forgotten

By mortals and gods alike—

But not by me.

I always look for you,

Because I know that’s where you are.

And yet, even as one face loves me

And the other tears me apart,

I love both of your faces.

Even when it shatters me,

Even when I cannot tell if I am standing

At the edge of an ending or the cusp of a beginning,

I love both of you.

And that, Janus, must be Cupid's eternal curse.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek