Early Autumn

Broken brooch pins, fallen cotton

Charcoal thumbprints on sunburnt shoulders

Your amphora forgotten in the grass

I loved you then

With wheat chaff and wind blown hair

Ancient memories

I’m so ****** tired of feeling compelled to suffer a penalty for you falling in love with me.

You knew I was a Jackal when you first tasted me.

I don’t owe you an apology for having survived nightmares, for loving you the best I could with what I had while horrible things were happening that I couldn’t tell you about.

I’m not an imposter, or a liar or less of a man than I presented as.

I fell in love with you and I didn’t want to.

We tried to staunch the blood still flowing from each other’s wounds…without knowing that we liked the taste.

Enough then
I don’t need your permission
    Or a final whisper from lips that raised all my dead

The cathedral in my heart that I lifted up for you
   And filled with all my lonely ghosts
     It burns tonight

And tomorrow
  The Beginning
    The Work
      The Empire