Bleeding Petals
A poem about a red daisy
Ten thousand petals.
Red, red, red like the blood dripping
Down his hand into grass gone black under the hour.
Midnight.
Without a moon or stars.
Just the soft plop of rain and the moan
Of a strengthening storm.
.
Run. Leave me.
.
The blood on his hands belonged in his veins,
The smudge of red on his lips belonged to another,
To the shadow, his lover.
The soft utterance of his farewell
That belonged nowhere clung to the air
Like the petrichor, unrelenting.
.
I'm sorry. I won't leave you.
.
It was a bad goodbye,
Broken by the impossibility of him weeping,
Shattered like glass inside of the man's chest
At seeing black eyes turn soft with sorrow.
It was a farewell
That should have never been.
A goodbye that only slept in myth.
.
Together then.
.
It happened.
The world erupted in red light,
Cosmic fingers hooking around his belt and yanking
Him far away from the clearing and its pretty little
Red gerbera daisies gathered around the forest's edge,
Watching as his world exploded into grief
And celestial impossibilities.
.
Dream of me.
.
He didn't want to dream.
They would all turn into nightmares anyway.
Thunder growled across the sky.
Little raindrops, warm and fat, fell from above.
Bright light raced across the nothingness,
Illuminating a mirrored cottage
To the one he once knew so intimately.
.
I'll find you.
.
Would he, the man wondered,
Tearing mossy eyes away from the lightless sky above.
The wand in his hand was gone.
Replacing it, a large red flower.
A gerbera daisy with its thousand bloody leaves.
He mouthed a spell, watched as nothing happened.
Cold wind slapped across his face.
.
There is no magic here.
_____________________________
After a bit of thinking (and a comment from D.K. Shepard) I've thrown this into the fantasy poem series below that I really need to get to naming. Check out the rest if you haven't!
About the Creator
Silver Serpent Books
Writer. Interested in all the rocks people have forgotten to turn over. There are whole worlds under there, you know. Dark ones too, even better.
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Llion the Brave Version 2
Her screams diminished as Llion was dragged away from the cell. The stench in the corridor was less but there was still damp, decay, defecation, death. His feet dragged, like a raggedy puppet, the guard either side of him holding him fast. He could feel their individual fingers digging into his scant flesh, leaving their impression on his bones.
By Rachel Deeming4 days ago in Fiction
Comments (4)
So many great lines woven here. I especially loved this one: —He didn’t want to dream, they would all turn to nightmares anyway—
This one reaches and grabs you when you read the lines pulling you in and immersing you. Impressive. That's all I can say a single word this poem embodies in every way
So visceral and what a haunting last line! Another slice of excellence! Is this one part of a series or a stand alone?
Remarkable writing!