free verse – The Light is On

Seven Flowers

Give in, she whispered. It’s inevitable...

breathe in cold vapors, ash, heat in our lungs...

Storm isn’t enough to describe it, what we resisted as long as we could...

Frantic, shaking in the dark, cold the way death is cold...

The scene is set...

This world is acid on the skin not strong, but strong enough that it cannot be ignored...

A stone tossed and turning dragging behind it the weight of all this...

It’s in the water, in the air here, the leaves not alone in their dying...

Gasping, choking among refuse and wreckage, crawling out of waves like hammer strokes, the sunset at our backs and broken masts silhouetted...

It’s always raining here, a secret language falling steady, collected in stone basins...

I burn sage because I like the way it smells. The demons I let stay because they’re good company.

In another life with glasses raised and fire in our throats to keep us warm through the night...

After falling, breaking bones against the ground, the sky torn away replaced with flesh and blood, we laughed and laughed...

Tensed for a blow that may never fall, my back to the night and waiting...

They were handing out pieces of the apocalypse today...