Canonized

The echoes grow faint,

but you hear them soft and low from above and below,

just like a saint.

The whole world spinning, feels like flying through colors and drinking sound from downtown, everything blurry, fuzzy, and faint.

Everything is ridiculous, just like you as you swim through the thickness of losing your clutch on the slippery crystal image, the greasy smudge of your fingers dulling its glow.

You hold on too tight, the pressure of your desperation too much for the fragile illusion: shattered—the jagged shards cutting into your delicate fingers, prompting your blood to flow—

just like a saint.

Dimmesdale had the same complaint.

Lady, may your hands forever reek of cruelty, the spots never fade, staining

purloined letters, Shylock’s pound of flesh in the hands of Reagan and Goneril, Professor Umbridge with her bow and quill:

just like a saint.

I watch you play victim: a wounded princess devastated by the foul temptress is the image you paint.

I see Miss Havisham in tattered lace, a raven perched on a chamber door, Lady MacBeth washing her hands, Judas with twenty-seven on his lips, the house of Usher crumbling, Eliot clutching a handful of dust, Ichabod Crane on a slow horse trotting through Sleepy Hollow.

The echoes grow faint.

Just like a saint?