I was born, but once,
Yet I die endlessly
The fault lies in tender faith, soft, unguarded,
Beneath the venomous hood of
encroaching darkness.
Then came a swarm, encircling, relentless,
They claimed my being,
Drained my soul, consumed my breath
Rended my bones to splinters,
Time’s jagged saw distorting even mortality
Until existence unravelled.

I was blind, born sightless,
born to eternal darkness
Unseen were garlands of blossoms;
I smelled only the scent of ants akin
To the fragrance of decayed sorrows,
The acid of tears dried in hollow eyes,
And the ache of an unknown grief.
Within me resides a legion of shadows, alive,
I am voiceless, while their pale echoes
Forge a garden of infernos in my chest.
From that garden, I harvest melodies.
No leaves, no blooms, only poisonous ash.
Yet, I perish endlessly.

In silence’s abyss, at times,
An uncharted call rises,
A grey tumult,
Or the birthing ground of endless voids
Where stillborn stars lie row on row,
Floating in seas of sapphire wombs.
I was born, but once,
Yet, in dying, I have learned
Birth is but a protracted waiting,
For Eden, or another abyss:
A corpse ablaze in envy’s unyielding fire.