You’ve got the grin of a liar, and the frown of being caught.
I don’t trust you for a minute, you’re not the person I once loved.
And you’ve been damned with all your damning, at least inside my mind.
But inside my chest, a grave is being dug.
Rest in peace the girl who loved with open arms, scarless and white;
eager to please, without walls and without weeping.
I don’t know if you’re playing dead, or the coffin’s sealed and shut.
And if you’re being buried, I, too, will have a tomb; RIP the girl you once knew.
Were you always such a sinner, selfish and insatiable and scarring?
I believed you every second, every whisper in my ear.
Take a bow and pack your things, or somehow prove me wrong.
I used to think the world of you, and how beautiful a place was this world with you in it.
I’m running out of reasons and you’re running out of time.
If patience is a virtue, call me a sinner, too.
But now we’re both nearly six feet under and the stars are dimming.
The box of your beloved words to me is burning in my stomach and ringing in my ears;
you don’t care anymore, if you ever did.
On my heart you’ve left nothing but tea rings and bullet holes and burns and cracks.
But what hurts the most is not any of this, but that I still can’t regret a thing.

.





          Pushing on with the dusty plumes of stinging ash from week's old corpses filling the air, and every other possible breathing space, I am left with a bit of the old luck to have the fortunate state of being as I am standing in the place where so many before me have fallen. Dressing down any stares that seize their frigid hold unto myself and my girl by my side, dissolving in my shadow for fear has turned her heart, and wrenched it in a garroting squeeze for this present time.

          Fortnight, in the wood, just outside the border to the town and over a small mountain in the sea's direction, we had camped amongst such majestic hosts such as deer, dark-eyed Junco, and other gulls that flew in to investigate with their dizzying sweeps chanting their peeps over towering Elm and Fir. Lady Nicole had offered to find food and help toward the West where the cliff kisses the bluest of oceans, and had now been gone for the span of two days before just arriving back at sun's rise this crisping, crackling morn in the forest alive. My gear was packed up and slung over the backs of two seemingly domesticated horses she had found, one of them tethered to the saddle of the other one in front. The horse in front was supreme in blackest color and much like that of a Gelding with such stamina and presence, that surely the other horses would have revered him honorably. Lady Nicole mentioned, before befriending a pile of matted leaves for her head's rest, that her dress was ripped and needed some attention after she catches her nap with a most nervous look upon her face!

         Two days had passed with no word from her when worry took on a dark and loneliest of tone. She has returned, but hasn't. It drives me to the base of my senses to try and mind her privacy along with her safety in the physical sense and mental capacity to absorb all this destruction and sadness around. Now, here before my feet with her vulnerability on full display, she lay in company of Earth's oldest trees that afford us our protection from soldiers who played "God", burning down our church and homes in the king's unholy name. It was meant to be that this moment was to be between her and me. What reasons are to be examined in the present time that we are facing if they only add to its stressful confusion, thus declining our health to unsavory levels? We remain strong! We remain strong for each, for ourselves to protect each other.

         She had rolled over, feet kicking slightly and her hands pressing her dress, which had been slashed in the most curious of places. She lay silently upon the loam and leaf with her hands between her legs as she moaned and cried, babbling in a dream's intermission with words of a degrading manner. Shocking, yes, but asleep and that put priorities first and foremost. The sun had just started to cut through the long extending fingers of the Elm and Fir surrounding; Lady Nicole's wake was nearing soon. Excellent timing on my part to have our area free of debris and wreckage from cooking and living in Mother Nature's kitchen on roots and pillows of reindeer moss strewn about the neighboring trees in our short stay. The horses were fed, conveniently, from a pouch fixed to their saddles. Each of them seemed to come equipped already. I was certainly curious if she had stolen these beasts that were groomed, fed well, and of proud posture. Surely, someone out there is looking for their missing horses! To shake off the nerves of worry and confusion while she slept, I found myself telling myself jokes no one would find funny.

            Lady Nicole started to open her eyes as she held her stomach, rocking back and forth for a few minutes collecting herself. “Have you seen my dress? It's wrecked! Look at it. What on God's green Earth is going to fix this mess I've come to bare?,” she asked. Looking her over, she was as if sleep had evaded her since our last parting a few days earlier. I wasn't even aware that there was any cause for alarm yet. Her punching and kicking in her sleep was typical. “My backside is bloody and aching from what they did to me over there! I was taken in my sleep to a barn where they strung me up to a beam by my neck, and I couldn't even reach the floor with my feet. They didn't care about me at all! They just dragged me there and started tying things together, tight and hard, with my hands and elbows bound by the same rope that was probably around 30+ feet or so. I couldn't scream! I couldn't...............I couldn't do anything, and the pig ears they shoved in my mouth!!" "Wait…. Wait!! Pig ears? Taking you? What happened? You were supposed to just try and find a ride or some food, Nicole." I couldn't believe the words she was saying. The words, unEarthly words I wasn't ready to hear at any time in any mood was now carving at my anger that was starting to seethe with no direction of comprehension or target for such violence! Lady Nicole clasped her hands together between her legs and continued, "They took those bloody pig ears, held my mouth open, and held them there by one of their foul smelling shirts tied 'round my face and head, stopping me from begging God, himself, to smite me dead where I swung from that devil's beam! The creaking and cracking I heard was loud, along with the breathing in my face and hits to my stomach that took a lot to want to stay alive! I'm not sure how I made it! At one point, I could actually hear my own heartbeat as all sound in the barn went mute and sought out the refuge of the dark surrounding. I heard nothing until there was the sound of distinct clicks of a flint. I could feel a slight heat start to warm just under my pussy, but it did not burn...... yet. Even if I could see, I couldn't lean my head forward out of instinct 'cause they kept it in place, fixed to something just above my head! My chest was sticking out like a fool. I'm not even sure if I passed out at any point, for every time I had a new thought or heard a new sound, it was a reminder that I was to suffer more of the same. Do you hear what I'm saying to you? This was crazy! This was fuckin' crazy! Crazy people shoved sharp objects inside me and twisted them for the longest time! My pussy is scarred and burns like the very Hell I suffered! Hours that had…….had……had felt like days turning into ……turning into weeks. It all stopped as soon as it began, when a boy the height of my exposed and bloodied breasts untied me, showing me where the horses were that carried the despicable scum that came to rape me in that fuckin' barn! He threw my dress, what was left of it being stained and soiled from blood and urine, up over my shoulders. What a mess. What a mess. What a fuckin' mess! In God's country I suffer this? I am STILL shaking! Fucking monsters! I want to kill them!!! Kill them! ….what about the baby?”

             She cried for around an hour as signs of her torment had darkened the moss under her ass in dark stains of pooling blood. All I could do in that instance was to hold her and hope not to run into these monsters. Lady Nicole glanced up at me and whispered softly between small gulps of air, shaking, “If your pride should dictate how you feel about me as I have been taken by another man in the eyes of God, feeling that incredible heated stretch to my asshole ripping every hour after every painfully constant hour, I should say thus far, it has surely been tested in such a state of chaos! Would you not agree? I'm.....I'm. Look at me!,” she moaned, making her point well received. “I'm looking at you!”, I assured her, as I brought her in closer to me sitting, slightly rocking at a tree's base. “I'm pregnant. I've been pregnant since my husband deserted me to go fight for France, not six months ago now when I met you. Did you hear me? I'm pregnant. Am I to understand that if he is gone that he is not the father? ……and I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding and soaking the Earth below us now." She tapered off with her volume slowly resuming to that of a coherent and rational state. "…....I'm pregnant with YOUR child and not his. Have I lost the baby? I don't…. I don't even know, and now I fear my gift to this life I know with you in it, has been taken away from us, having suffered that evil I felt inside me at that decrepit barn of filth and disgust! I want to burn it down!” She slowly drifted back into sleep's hold once again.

           My heart was ripped in so many different directions from the news she had poured onto my soul during her wake and ramble. I sat and cried, quietly, as my tears were sponged by her tossed fiery red hair. All I could do was hold her close and wonder what was to become of my Nicole. Before she left, before all this happened on her lone trip, she confided in me one night worrying that the words she was about to say to me would certainly change us forever. She accepted my embrace and kept me close to her back, taking in a much needed and secure hold around her arms an chest, whispering, “I can't live without you in my presence and even the sound of my own name seems to go unheard unless you are the one who calls to me. My ears are deaf to a stranger's tongue, and it surely gets little more than a stare from me. You say my name and my ears hear new songs that haven't heard such beautiful a tone before. I don't care what it means; it just feels good, and that has to matter, to us, to me. No? Does this make any sense to your boyish brain that surely must consist of my bouncing breasts and the lager that puts you in sottish fits of drunkenness from time to time? Does it?”

            I assured her it did. It didn't make sense until she laid it out for me in its truly rawest form. No less than a month's time had passed before the king's soldiers had exacted their prejudice on our town's Catholic church and rid of our children and elderly in quick succession like pigs, that only Hell could ever commend! Lady Nicole's eyes were painted, always, with the hints and hues of violet and blood-red rouge, ever astounding me in her patience to commit to such an ordeal to achieve her perception of beauty. Her God can wait to take this child of Mary from me that lay delicate and saddened before me, wrapped inside my arms. This life is hard enough on her to pass a day away without her riding by my side taking in the same adventure I may be privy to. This life, my life, is hers to do as she pleases, for in the songs that bellow out from her heart of hearts, I shall remain in her grace without pause or borrow thoughts of abandoning her; especially in this unbelievable time of need. Possibly losing our baby, and Lady Nicole being submissive to my needs, has definitely changed now, and shall not be tested for any reason imagined. It was never mentioned to me how tough life was when I wore a younger man's clothes!

           She joined the day, just when the noon sun had imposed its heat upon the backs of our necks as we sat slumbered in rarest company of Nature's beauty! She opened her eyes and searched for her rosary that was bloodied and still attached to her swollen breasts. She squeezed my hand as I stood her up. We talked for a bit about why good things happened to good people, and the evils one gets to play when playing God amongst the weak in selfish pillages of the flesh. Those men tore into her with a fever that is unknown to me in this wide and once wondrous world! It was almost a day's ride to the sea where the Cliffs of Moher stretched out to the heavens where angels took their refuge inside plumes of frost and mist above the salty air.

            I tied the horses to an old post sticking out of the ground and walked with her to the edge of the cliff, facing the salty blast of the sea. We seemed to be stuck in time with the squeaks of gulls echoing their ocean haunts to our now sensitive ears. She turned to me with an expression slowly drowning in a frown, but with a sort of enthusiasm, and said, “I want to leave.......with you....I want to leave with you, right now.” I searched around my head for some words that would hopefully make sense to her and not come out as sarcasm and said, squinting in the chilly wind that was sweeping up the cliffs from the sea to our faces damp with a heavy mist, “We just got here. Lets back away from the cliff and rest ourselves a bit.” She stood staring, holding her belly with tears running down her bruising face, mumbling in old Gaelic speech not spoken outside her once booming and beloved town. Slowly, she started a slow walk, reaching out her right hand toward me to receive me in her arms whilst keeping her left hand pressed firmly against her belly still. "I Love You," she said. I didn't even want to suggest that I knew what she was thinking. I loved her, and as I loved her, I knew she was surrendering to her God and me in her life in such great defeat right before my very eyes!

            A lightning storm started to bang away in the distance, sending to us a false bravery as we swayed in the wind, easily rocking back and forth, and filling our lungs. I looked at her, and she looked back at me scanning my face for expressions without the need for explanations. I wanted to cry. I HAD to cry. I wanted to…. I HAD to show her that pain was real, but there was a chance to rebound from it, as I have practiced in my life until now. In a storm of love and lightning, we both scanned the horizon; as our forever witness, the ocean, waited for our souls to enter. We sighed, we smiled, we breathed in with full intent, and leapt, bounding over the cliff's edge, rocks falling as our heels parted from the safety of land, splitting the air to take the ride of our lives! With the air trying to part us and screaming past our ears like bats screeching, I pulled her as close as possible, giving her one last kiss upon her lips till I see her again on the other side in a better time, wherever that shall be! Trusting her, holding her, and forever loving her......I mouthed the words, “I love you!” …….."I Love You"!






-Mark Lach


All of my writing has been copyrighted, but this one is published, too.