shell

you … sweetly spun me like sugar into cotton candy - from a dizzy bobbin to ornament for a spring willow … no lament avowed, for there is a demon in your eyes whose night blade feeds … he stalks me - spurious spear in his grasp not near as lethal as the shimmer that winks me from those depths, abyssal or the tender tendrils, oily black reaching from the unfathomable fathoms to sunder my forsaken heart and turn my marrow molten … melting … flesh burning for your arrow - welts of passion that thirst to weep crimson yet not even you can pierce that hermetic husk … hardened by casual care, another’s name, and the tear-tempered steel of your bewitching … gaze. Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, January 6, 2024 ( painting by Bruno Barreira taken from public domain files at Saatchi Art )