Passer
2022-04-23

***

Dreams of my youth in red,
painted in bloodshed
from retribution for crimes
where my body was ripped away,
proclaimed
not mine,
belonging to someone else
along with my life.
Yearning to dig my claws into
someone else's flesh,
feel
the heart giving way,
no longer obligated to kneel
at my nemesis'
behest.

But over this Inside lies a veil.
And while I lie
in the land of the blind
half-seeing with eyes groping
for a shred of the life
last life's death made me left behind,
I cannot go feral, cannot exhume
the beast inside me built of chaos and doom.
Imagined revenge in a manner
that would not bring me harm,
would never, could never
be traced back to me,
never raise any alarm
bells.

But the skies have grown pale
on this day laden with angel
numbers. Death in the family.
A pet's soul has chosen to set sail.
The wish is granted. The curse is complete.
The harm has been done, but it does not taste sweet.

You remember, don't you? My thelema, my fate
was to love at any cost and forget how to hate.
There's a difference between the sexes in most that I've seen:
men opt to destroy, and women first choose to escape,
choose to from what they find odious themselves separate.
I don't want my enemies to drop over dead.
I just want to never have my neck be stomped on again.

Does that make sense?

My mother is mourning upstairs.
"Mourn." When I had first heard
in elementary school that word,
I'd thought it was short for "morning",
as in, "I am sad and waiting for the sun to rise,
reassurance that I survived,
that I've still inside me got some life
left."

Mother, I hope that one day
you'll forgive me for taking your baby sunshine away.
That you'll watch the next sunrise for me
after my psychopomp has taken me to Sablade.
The sun is also a star.
And in time
another star will rise.
And I can't believe
after everything
I'm saying this, but I hope
this won't be our last goodbye.

***

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander
