‘Why do you colour your lips so black,
Darken your piercing eyes,
What are you hiding behind your back,
Have you been telling me lies?
Why are you wearing those knee length boots,
Pulling that cloak round, tight,
Where are you going, under the Moon,
Where will you be tonight?

Christabel grimaced but wouldn’t reply,
She turned, with her hand on the door,
Gazing right through me, I’d thought that she knew me
But there was no love like before.
Her brows, they were furrowed, her eyes hard as glass,
Her lips they were pursed in contempt,
I should have left then when she’d put down the pen
But I didn’t know then what it meant.

I knew she was moody, I knew she was dark,
She’d flutter round blind, like a moth,
She always wore black, even out in the park,
They warned me, they said ‘She’s a Goth!’
I’d found her entrancing at first, I admit,
I tried to get into her mind,
But once in those raveling tunnels of darkness
The deepest of thoughts were unkind.

I picked up the note she left ******* on the floor
The moment she left for the night,
‘I have to see Jack,’ she had scribbled, ‘That’s that!’
I must put my nightmares to flight.’
I knew there was darkness and heartache to come,
She’d promised him plenty of strife,
But then I’d jumped in to his bucket of sin
As I thought she was out of his life.

I asked her at first was she over him yet,
And yes, she assured me she was,
But surely his name wouldn’t drive her insane
If it wasn’t a question of loss!
A terrible feeling came over me then,
I needed to know where she went,
So headed on out to where Jack hung about,
I shouldn’t have gone, I repent.

I saw through the window the angel of death
Her cloak streaming out, like a moth,
And he in the corner, not catching his breath
His throat in the grip of a Goth!
I tried to burst in but the door was deadlocked,
I saw the knife raised in her fist,
Then plunge, and a scream like some terrible dream,
For just as he died, she had kissed!

She came out toward me but covered in blood,
On hands, on her lips and her face,
While I backed away, I had nothing to say,
But,‘Heaven above, lend me grace!’
She ran away, stumbling, on through the dark
But she’d not seen her nightmares off,
I found she was hung on a light in the park,
In her mouth was a fluttering moth.

David Lewis Paget