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She will be waiting in the shady places dead, and dead and deader still. Crimson lips upturned in sneer, a whore, a multitude of sins. Bloodlust turning into ash, [Again? But I am moving, waiting...] nothing to live for [die for, neither] but the next fated trick of hope? [no; it's been still far longer than four centuries] a slight of hand in this, the game of unlife which she never wins. The sun is not remembered, and the moon has flown. She's on her own. Black as smoldered coal and fawning for the Master to push her down, for the boy she'd never dared to call Beloved. Lost and whining birds calling shrieking for their dead and eaten mates, plucked over by the vultures in their macabre feast: she is as lost as these, but dirtier. Remembering an iron claw holding its victim captive; once, she was the one who held the throat and tore it out. What happens to conviction? The rips and shreds, the hot gush- bruises like ripe fruit- were mauling banshee echoes. Howling, lightning swift- Reverberations which ruled the world. Tonight she creeps; a quiet death. Now, it is as if the nights crawl by like leaden parasites affixed to her skin, like shackles or a drape of rotting flesh-- weighing her down as anchors do. She never flew, but she imagines that she did. She is waiting in the shady places dead, and dead and deader still. |