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I chase her out among the rocks and grass,
slipping and sliding from this great typhoon:
the bright green pastures now runny like paint
darkened and matted from the storm’s barrage
where, against a boulder, she lay huddled,
the rain now masking her red wetted cheeks
and her white spring blouse now wet and faded
revealing more so the source of her sobs.
It’s fine, I plead as I stretch out my hand.
What’s that? Your scars? It’s fine, I don’t mind them,
nor do they offend the others inside;
they’re mere gossipers whose fancy you caught,
for you must have been out fighting pirates,
battling Titans and great golden Wyrms
with only those brave marks of yours as proof
of your warring against Heaven and Hell.
She laughs as her fingers hook into mine,
her giggles like hot bubbles of oil
floating slowly to my furnaced body
and melting the rain to this hazy steam
that I wish could swallow her in an embrace.
The day I said ‘I love you’ and meant it
was not when we were bound in holy vows
or when I heard those gasps between the sheets
nor when your tummy bulged and stretched with life
but when I saw the scabbed lines on your skin
luminate like embers in the Summer
and glow a darkened blue in the Winter,
your fragile form breaking at the seams
from the soul that it could barely contain.
And yet you still were so bashful and shy
a recluse from the world you thought hurt you,
and yet you shirked when I became your shield;
a paradox I do not understand.
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So, to honour my delicate bride
I burned and ripped the Equator’s forests
and, in their place, a sturdy pavilion
bricked together by glittering diamonds
and, perched on top, a peaceful conqueror
stood my wife’s figure cast in soft gold
so I could carve what made her beautiful
and splash those wounds with my colourful truths:
those reds and blues meeting for the first time,
a mixtured swirl of the many seasons
that had come to define her.
But when she looked upon her great honour
in her euphoria, she shivered and wept,
stamped her feet and convulsed a shrill cry
as she now saw my love made manifest.
And with this epiphany, her health broke,
her wailing now confined to a soft bed
kept in view of her timeless monument
where after five evenings she passed away
struck down by this unrestrained devotion.
I have her buried deep in a brass crypt
and ordered the tomb sealed shut behind me,
the makings of this world beyond my care.
I glare down at her sheened, mocking coffin
now robbed of my fractured stained glass portrait
that I long to eternally mend to.
My nails bleed and scratch against the metal
as I melt into an Archon puddle
my back breaks away as eight dangling legs
ascend and rip from the base of my spine
with long great scalpels adorned at the tips
pawing at and breaking apart her frame
until only a heap of scattered bones
lie marauded in my basket of limbs.
I find those thin wrists and hollowed shoulders
and scratch those fine lines back where they belong
so that I may perpetually worship
and lord over my broken woman.
For I shall never sleep
And I will never die
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