The knaves’ tale

In this place light has never touched flesh. The solitary rook cries out a lantern, and every graveyard answers. Ghost and Bone. Skull and Ghoul. Chain and Pain. Crawling from the plague pits, beauty dripping pus alongside the beast. There’s nothing quite like the stench of proximity to kill the mood.  Does it do to wander where the children of carrion rise? Death can be born so easily, carried home on a single kiss perhaps? My thoughts have been feathered of late. And yes, I believed them. I even thought I was the protagonist, sometimes…a billion times. But no matter which road I take, I always end up crashing the same party.

Day cuts deep along the skyline, bleeding crimson with its skin. Chorus would herald the fading of this fearful night, but even the familiar of that song is lost. Scratched silent in the inking of mutilated shadows, a hundred heartbeats seeking out the stick built towers where a crow can become a rook. Fights and flights. Fears and Tears. Rambles and Shambles. Everyone is invited. And spliced between the knaves of rhyme, the solitary rook becomes crow.

© 2017 jac forsyth