How it
began
is undecided
How you
fought
it –
underhanded;
How
the battle
dragged
unending
remains
unspeakable
to me
still.

The same game
of war and
bleak execution
is played out
across another
shattered landscape
despite all
rituals made to the Æsir
of painful assurances
and promises of partisan faith
an offering
to their altar
of innocence and innocents
the lives of those least capable
of resisting fate

Even as we touched
all gods were watching;
it was too brilliant
too broken
for the heavens not to notice
and be jealous even
into hell.

You are thin

Of fuschia skin

Round rose-pinking

All squint-high

Soaring

Your tight cheeked thinness

A drawn down struggle

Of my embattled

Puff hard

Breaths.

I watch her. Refracted, the shimmering shadows
Her curved riping body, demon-faced fair.
She is foreign, familiar, a darkly-lit ice queen
Besting galaxies old dusted star-strewn;
Clad velvet, locked rusting, in iron’s cold stare.

Once –

I shattered worlds.

Whip smart

Whip

I ran rings around their mind games

Without their even knowing;

I remember

the feeling of sheer joy and

the shining elastic triumph

that came

with the unthinking ease of my body’s movement

hand lightly, lightly, on the barre

my bones muscles tendons joints and – oh

my skin