Blood On the Mirror

You prod at the sores of your heart with a hemorrhaging pen, wishing it was a scalpel; so you could carve out the disease that keeps your rage alive. Basic instinct, I suppose. To slay the demons, that made you who you are. You thank them for your posture, but scold the obsidian eyes in the mirror. What you have become: Callous, and engulfed in the rotting theater you thought you controlled. The reigns have broken loose, your skull whips in the wind of chaos. It’s not really your sort of dance, you know… You don’t know the steps …you don’t even know the song. It drums against your flesh as if you were already stripped and tanned, spread across the hallowed instruments of reckoning. But you can’t hear the chant, only the distant hum of the butcher who said you could call him “friend”. That you were safe, if only you would show him what you promised you would never show anyone. It drips, thick, coagulated, dirty. Just like every part of you, you wish you could burn; As you dig the covenant, into the flesh of your enemy; Your only true, enemy. The mirror cracks… -James Kelley 2014, All rights reserved.