Westward

Westward,

and I discovered

your mangled form covered

in the stench of decay,

vultures swaying

through the auburn sky.

I was entrenched

in grief and abandonment.

You never questioned

how the story ends,

the one with a girl

and fatherly man,

who pretended

he didn't have a heart

yet kept it secreted

in the gnarled chest

she carved her eleventh

spring when he gifted

his old blade and

made her promise

to take care.

It ends like this:

the empty stare

from a soul

still of this world

but not for long

and an orphan,

wishing she hadn't

planted that garden

of aloe

or given all her love

to a fool

with a death wish.

Careless

it was to hope

you had deserted

the creed and bullets

that always followed.

Their shells sting

in memory

of the family

I dreamt we were.

Bitter revenants will surface,

eventually,

and I will tell them

the sour story

of a cowboy,

gunslinger,

knife wilder who never

knew peace,

scoured the face

of our earth in search

for his next enemy,

convinced

there would always be

another.

Westward,

and your wounds

look like a painting

by a young beast

who didn't quite understand

the art of killing,

skills needed to end suffering

before its feast.

No salve or witchery

can unmark you,

so I pray to

the soil to soften

your passing

and search your belongings

for the chest, weathered

and full

of a heart

that is somehow

still beating.