When All Was Still

The battle of the heart ablaze with fire, The battle for the soul still yet to come, Who could foresee the things that would transpire? Who could foretell which side there would have won? When all was still, though not yet still enough, A victor, only one, rose from the earth, And rise and rise again, up from the dust, Battle wrought, from dust that gave new birth. When all was still, three hearts had broken and Two mended, one left beating on the floor, Its bloody writhing tainting the white sand, The battle lost for it, and closed the door. Though two had been made whole and were renewed, The third was struck and broken down to ash. The gods had been let loose, and had imbued All three with magic powers that would clash. The raging bonfire two had lit as one Had then burned out with distance and with time. Still raging, though, the third’s fire just begun Would captivate the other with a rhyme. He wrote the swan song’s words and spoke them out, The incantation writ, the prophecy. When all was still, he’d won a heart with clout And left another in a Jealous Sea. If every breath an incantation, then, And every sentence writ, a magic spell, The rhyme began inside that heart again The waving, salty sea, that hopeful swell. Hope for the hopeless what he spoke, his creed, Yet from another heart he took away The only hope that it could ever need, Though that hope would come back another day. What had begun as playful friendliness Had changed to something more, and something deep And finally to true love might progress, If one the other’s heart would always keep. Forged from the battle’s heat, from blood and fire, And hammered with the anvil and the steel, That heart would have naught left but to retire And bitterness for those two always feel.