Don’t walk into the shadows, for they are too deep.
You might slip through the floor and into the sea
Where the Golden King now lies,
Watching the end go on by.

As around us spun the star-filled void,
I spoke to a man whose own fate he avoids
By standing outside of the Garden’s gate
And leaving us all to our ill-bound fate.

Together we watched the world that existed below
Slowly turn to the end we all know
That dwells deep within the sun,
An all-consuming fire that no ship can outrun.

Our souls are tied to the light of the moon,
Because the sun swallowed the world too soon,
And left the oceans baked red
And burnt everything green to black and dead.

On top of the sea in that star-filled void,
The King watched as humanity was surely destroyed.
Inch by inch, they fought to not give
To the bubbling sun that ate all of its terrestrial kin.

With a cruel, unholy smile
He turned to me after a long while,
And asked if this death was truly my fate
Or if I wanted his power to tear down God’s Gate.

On top of the world and at the end of it all,
I met a golden King who was the creation of Gods and the heir to their fall.
Neither of us could help it when I took his hand
And, with what was left of the world, made our last stand.

A maiden lost before her time,
Her dying light casts a shadow upon a man's face
Revealing the monster that has always existed.

A fool reaches forward to grasp an illusion,
A friend who is nothing but the mirror of a mirage
Always avoiding the truth in the reflection.

Welcome back to the island, friends,
For it has been so long since then,
When we wandered these shores in childish wonder
And played these games in the shadows of absent stars.

Snow piles up against the walls, but thin clothes are all they wear
As the boy gardens within the greenhouses behind the school,
Red, bright tomatoes slipping out of his fingers, and popping into his mouth
That grins at the bursts of sweetness.
Inches from him, the man by one month pretends not to glance his way
Instead shifting through the bristling leaves to claim breakfast’s zucchini.

He would complain at the theft if the tomatoes weren’t everywhere
Making bland meals of packaged rice and canned beans a savory impossibility.
It isn’t like little indulgence will take away all of the red little briberies,
The secret keys to a reluctant community spreading its arms wide months after the pair stumbled in.

The man scowls, and the boy glances up
Not hiding his interest like his companion.
The solution to anger is always tomatoes,
So the next slip of fingers is against the man’s lips
As he bites down, the sweetness pops away mild irritation in the flavor of surprise.
Neither gives in to smiles, but their shoulders brush more than once as the tension seeps out with the heat into the snow.

Distracted,
She’s holding the flat popcorn bag in hand,
Giggling into the phone while the boy
Idles time away rereading a well-worn tale.

It expands,
The bag in hand
Blowing up past her fingers
Onto countertops and kitchen floors.
Partially cooked kernels skid away
From giggles rising to shrieks
That shatter the lights around the pair and tears through the house.

The girl hunches in the kitchen,
Sheepish embarrassment erupting in pink blushes across the face,
While the boy slowly lowers the book made helmet.

His hands tremble, but she does not see,
For he shakes his head in exasperation
And goes for the brooms down the hall.

They spend the rest of the evening bathed in candlelight
Curled up on the couch with the taste of salt on their tongues
From the bag of chips shared between them.

When you run your fingers through his hair,
They burn as hot as the orange strands
That streak through the red of his locks
Which are too warm these fall nights.

You’re not sure when you realized that
He wasn’t like you,
Human and soft enough to be pricked by the knife’s edge
That he playfully dragged across his tongue
While looking at you with eyes that refracted the amber light of his soul.

He’s not sure when he realized that he’d stay,
Far past the summer when you met
On the sandy banks of the lake that swallowed light
Until it was the same deep blue of your eyes,
Binding him to your side long after the sun set
And the rays upon the bed’s sheets had faded
Into a warm glow in the dark.

When he runs his hands over your toes,
Cooled by the coming winter
That wraps you up in wool sweaters
And leaves you huffing as he walks by in only jeans,
He realizes that he dare not leave
You to grow cold these coming nights.