Perish the Fool


Feel bereft, my love.
Let the acid creep in your veins,
down to your guts,
stewing in its rancid juices.
Let the loneliness hang
like a thread about your neck,
in great rasping sobs in the night.

Oh, how I hurt because of you.
The deep ache of quiet despair,
my armor already coming back
in place.
A shiny carapace of skin and blood,
of stinging eyes and butterfly pain.
So young are you,
were you,
and I did not see it.
I thought you were like me.
Perish the fool.

I try to hide away the comfort,
that electric connectivity,
faerie gold fading in the sunlight.
I know the walls rise up,
and you know.
And you want it that way.
The flowering distance, flowing,
breaking with its heavy thunder.
So far.

My wings are tucked, reabsorbed,
their frail remains vanishing
in the breeze.
I must fly a different way,
deep within
where the thorns are sharp and overgrown.
My throat is clasped,
unhinged then hinged again,
wired shut.

You started it, of course,
with your sunbright smile and soft lips.
With your words, callow and free.
I broke my threshhold for you,
to cross and touch you.
To believe in you.
Perish the fool.

It settles inside, the knowledge,
wormy and dead,
soft as leaves.
The stench curls,
wrapping its tendrils around your image
in my brain, dimming it.
Dimming you
so your gleam can't zing through the morning,
can't awaken me.
So you can't touch me.
Never ever
are the words, smooth as pale stones,
dropping.
I step back and place you back
among the mortals, down
among the ruins,
their faceless mass.

My smile is bright,
my eyes are chilled,
and my chest a beating, pulpy thing
of soiled tears and barbed wire.
The flame will burn
every time you touch it, child.

Perish the fool.



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