Squandered love

1 Samuel 19:11-17

Saul sent messengers to David’s house to keep watch over him, planning to kill him in the morning. David’s wife Michal told him, “If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.” So Michal let David down through the window; he fled away and escaped. Michal took an idol and laid it on the bed; she put a net of goats’ hair on its head, and covered it with the clothes. When Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, “He is sick.” Then Saul sent the messengers to see David for themselves. He said, “Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him.” When the messengers came in, the idol was in the bed, with the covering of goats’ hair on its head. Saul said to Michal, “Why have you deceived me like this, and let my enemy go, so that he has escaped?” Michal answered Saul, “He said to me, ‘Let me go; why should I kill you?’ ”

Michal

Just another woman

placed in an impossible position

for the love of her man

Caught between

her father

and her husband 

her loyalty stretched beyond

what anyone should experience

Fiercely loving

Often saving his skin

Yet David

in his freedom

casts her off

until, when it suits him

he reclaims her

as a trophy wife.

Just another woman

with so much to give

who squanders her love

on an undeserving man

and is dragged into the pit

forced to witness his depravity

Forced to pay the price

of loving the wrong man,

Michal 

fathered by Saul

married to David

Caught in the middle 

of love unrequited.