I often look at you.
You're dead yet more alive to me
Than the living, breathing corpses
I see daily.
I know you better than my mother.
I think about a conversation
That may have been between us.
How you may have looked,
Dressed in the finest cloth
Yet small and frightened
For all your smiles and bravado.
The shadow of the axe falling across your neck
Was there for years.
You fell into a sea of unfathomable depths
And you treaded water as long as you could
Yet everyone grows weary.
And you drowned.

She sleeps alone tonight
Her pillow a lake
Her blankets a tomb
Her heart a boulder
Her eyes twin waterfalls
Her lips a chasm
Unending
Ever changing
Unyielding
But soft and fragile
And injured beyond recognition.

You.
A cherub, it may seem.
All golden and warm.
Once I looked upon you and wept
For the beauty before me touched me.
A smile, a laugh, a look.
I felt a balm upon my soul when
You lay your weight upon me.
Then it came.
The beauty became tainted
Displeasure and impetuousness
Clinging to you like rank sweat.
I turned away and you whirled me around.
It was then that I got a good look at you.
The gold turned to cheap
Flourescent lighting.
The warmth to a sticky heat.
The cherub to a fat, spoiled child.
And now I leave.