To Annywyn
I feel the first piercings of the swords like a fingertip getting pricked
by a wayward sewing needle. Sharp. Small. Just the very tip biting through
my skin.
So I breathe. A single phrase caught in the exhale, joined with the
sorrow of my heart.
Find me in another life.
Find me in them all.
And then there is no room for words. None for coherent thought,
because the first of those swords sinks in deeper, and pain erases everything
else.
My body braces. My mind empties.
But then…the world erupts.
I don’t understand for a moment. When the ground shakes. When the
screams sound. I can’t grasp that the blades pressed into my body are no
longer firm or sharp. My numbed mind only registers something is off when
they fall away from me.
My eyes snap open to see dust as thick as fog crowding in the air.
Looking down, I see that the swords are no longer gleaming and silver, but
mottled with rust the color of amber stones and tangerines, and then they
suddenly disintegrate completely. I can feel them burst into powder where
they’ve sunk into my body.
And the guards...
I watch the man in front of me as his body morphs. Terrified eyes go
opaque, sinking down into their sockets. His jaw hangs open like his
muscles can no longer hold it. His lips peel, exposing a row of browning
teeth. His veins fester and burst, lesions peeling back up and down his neck.
He tries to grab hold of the pole, but his hands shrivel down to the bone.
When he falls, his body swells and twitches, bloating up
unfathomably large, before everything then seems to suck inward, shrinking
and shriveling until he’s just a husk of bones and dust.
got chills
“Patroclus.” Achilles did not slur my name, as people often did, running it together as if in a hurry to be rid of it. Instead, he rang each syllable: Pa-tro-clus.
