the second person lionizes the first

A Poem

blood pulses from a vein beneath the eye, threatening dark rooms and severance of thought,

mercy is in the reticence, brought by violence—

a quick shunting of metal through a pressure point, fading your murky-eyed stare.



next, you design your agonies with filigree edges and embellish your thoughts with the crest of a peacock,

each new name one piece of the fractured self,

wearing away bits of identity in favor of the dramatis personae scrawled in ink.



the horrors detest you; attempts at haunting your psyche succeed only in the throes of dormancy, at the nadir of natural poise,

though it is ephemera blinked away by morning,

blotted out by a vainglorious savant’s surfeit of prettier endeavors.



plucked from membrane and bone, you are meant for a fantasist's musing,

bearing sigils understood at a glance,

and I seek from you a holiness you were never capable of possessing.

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Author’s Note: I’m still around! I’ve endeavored to stay offline as much as possible while keeping my ear to the ground vis-à-vis local politics. It’s rough out here, but still I persist.

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