the life you have hitherto Refined
whence love shall wax and wane
cannot know Hephaestus's grief
for you and he are not the same.

now Steel your restless heart,
and from it, Forge the demon's bane
lest your senseless grief, in Fires
of boldest Mettle, wrong you all the same.

I lived and loved and lost it all
In just a single day.
I began anew and watched it fall
In a not-peculiar way.
For, you see, I've loved before
And seen it wash away,
So wherefore shall I try once more
In maybe one more day.

My heart didn't break
When you texted me "we're through."
It broke too, too terribly long ago.

You'd push away and longingly stare
At those with a nobody
pretending to be someone.

You closed off your life
And blamed me for respecting you
For giving you space.

But now, your grindstone letters
Which have crushed me for so long
Merely ground the flour
That Will, one day, bake a beautiful cake.

I wait for the day,
That may never come,
When I can say

Stronger now
Better now
Repaired now
Myself now.

But like the dust in the mill,
You've stained the flour, tainted the cake.
You got what you wanted, but still you take,
With the impunity of the grindstone, crushing the flour.

And that is why the flour never wears on the grindstone.

Where's the divide
Between wrong and right?
At an officer's side
Or the unarmed's height?

Who's in the wrong
When everyone is?
This violence does nothing
Whether trans, gay, or cis.

Why won't they speak
When the world is ending?
When majorities win,
The rules begin bending.

I don't want to leave behind
The world I've come to know.
And I refuse to return blind
From the land of ice and snow.

The land of painful suffering
I've come to know so well
I must depart for fairer lands
Then return to blazing hell.

The issue here, I don't exactly know.
Its fire never scorched me
Its barbs have never scratched me.
All I can tell you is that

I don't want to go.

You smile like a wolf about to ****.
Your cruel, sharpened fangs barred in spite.
Your voice was gold, your white cuspids alight.
You smile at your prey; we deer stand still.

I know the smile shall end where it will.
I know it never reaches to your eyes
And I know, like one bitten once or twice,
That the wolf closes its eyes to ****.

The wolf leans in too close, panic sets in
Stumbling through apologetic speech in
An effort to get somewhere else, again...

The deer springs into action, can't win
For wolves hunt in packs, the wingman swoops in
Now trapped by foes unbeatable, I'm slain.

The world is quiet here.
Woes are never near
Because someone here
Will always lend an ear
Or give a cheer
And never leer.
So even though it's roaring, dear,
The world is quiet here.