And at the end of the night
when all the creaks in the floorboard are tired
of creaking
and the sky looks like oil slick on asphalt,
all fuzzy black and still;
while midnight creeps in
through gaps in laughter
and yawns wide enough to swallow me whole;
after the lull of full bellies
and soft yellow good-nights fade into the blissful quiet,

I still close my eyes
and I think of you.

How does it feel?

To be a leech?
To siphon the life out of everyone who has the misfortune of breathing your air?
To paint the room with a stench so thick with wickedness that the walls cave in around you?

How does it feel to loathe the essence of your own animal so loudly-
And yet, so shamefully?
Does it soften the torment?
Or do you just lie in it?
Sink in it?
Drown in it?

Does it really cut you open like the Curse of Aphrodite?
Feast on your rancid, rotted, spirit?
Or is it just Ananke and Phthonus smoldering in your veins?
Fueling your fire together
and igniting that foul and wretched creature inside of you?  

How does it feel to bare witness?
To be consumed by us?
To be plagued by the melody of our magic,
knowing your seething rage forever falls on deaf ears?

Does it bubble up through your chest and spill out of your ***** stained spout?
Does it flood your fragile bones,
and your tormented mind,
and your weak, trembling hands?

And does it soothe your bleeding tongue to swallow the sharpness of my sword?
And does it keep your embers warm to see yourself in her?
Or are you freezing?
In your own inexorable desolation?
Your casket of delusion?
In the frigid blight of a just exile?

Tell me:
How does it feel to sit in your brokenness?
To be so fractured by sickness?
So poisoned with envy?
What is it then,
Is it the purity of my blade you so desperately lust after?
Or just a mouthful of blood?

How does it feel to know,
in the deepest parts of you,
that when you lick your yearning lips at the thought of her,
you are tasting the flesh of your own captor?

How does it feel?
I’m glad I’ll never know.

the cyan air is kind again
our tongues much softer now
there is no wicked prophecy
left here to disavow

in this cruel place we knelt and wept
as autumn bore her teeth
but still it’s here where love has slept  
that roots have birthed beneath

she knew not the seeds that she had sewn
would stretch to taste the light
and in that wretched grime had grown
a fruit so pure and bright

and oh, how kind the stars have been
for here and now we stand
with all the saplings and the sins
together, hand in hand

what’s blossomed here is ours to tend,
a harvest all our own
this, i know, is the sweetest end
that i have have ever known