Monday 14 September 2020

Tempest Fugit



It’s not a lie when I say I've known such tears before.  Yours, mine and theirs. Those tears know me too.  I wear one hollowed on my finger.  A circle of salt screaming of betrothed.  The sun’s hidden midnight, living below horizon and sea.  A church of thorn and mirror beneath the blue.  Mira, you gave me your name.  So that you would look back at me every time I face myself.  Too much, and not enough.  Fairest and true.  I've known sorrow, my darling.  Ways and ladies of sorrow.  Every binding.  Every bitter wraith.  
  Apprentice, I beg you.  Pretty my devastation with all the glamour of peace.  That one day you might know me once more through softest eyes.  I've lost so many lovers in this river of the thousand stars. Make a Father of me again. This wounded ray of sunlight dipped in ink.  Forever falling into an angel's longest nights.
  Teach me sweeter secrets, Mira.  An endless hunger for honour.  A hidden tongue of birds. Gift me with flight and I shall bring the skies with me.  And the grey, and the rain.  To the door of any who dare defile my beloved ones.
   Love is worth my drowning and the agony of this open eye.
   Indeed.
  If character is fate then hammer me upon the anvil of life itself, until this fury of mine is fit for daughters and dreaming.  It isn't enough to rage, righteous or not. Torment must be tempered with a certain sweetness.  I have borrowed enough of it from my girls.  Time now to repay.  A place to believe, for guardian eternal.  Of poetry and prosper.  Descending, still, into those longest nights of the year.  And you’re with me, Mira.  No man is an island.  Not even the blackened sun.  I didn't forget you, teacher.  I gave you my name.


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