it's not that

we want to

even out

the loss

or settle

something

between us

...I'm dying

a slow and

anxious

morning,

rain and

tangerine

in colour...

left my

signature

and warning

scampering

back to

the hide,

inside the

skin of night

where not even

you as hero

can count

my wrong

doings,

nor pen

what can

never be

righted...

I have my

own bars,

and I'm singing

all off key and

cuff so that

you'll know

it's me jangling

with that

stainless

cleaver,

coming at

you from some

unexpected

direction...

and in the

meantime

slicin' in,

Anticipation.

07.22.2023

Villan Ark challenge @Meadow

I tried to find

A single instance

Where I don't die

But he does.

You know

Like a wrinkle in time

Each possibility

Rolled up

Into a stack of quarters

Ready to play

A different broadway

Song on the juke.

"Murder, Murder!"

I chose

and kept listening.

But "A Little Priest"

"Defying Gravity"

hummed a different tune.

"Ya Got Trouble"

said he.

"Wouldn't It be Loverly"

If you "Ease on Down the Road"?

No.

"Don't Rain on My Parade"

"Tonight"

"Anything Goes."

You're not "Helpless"

He cried.

Or "Satisfied,"

"All I Ask of You"

Is "Sunday."

And I

"Finishing the Hat"

Obliged.

Perhaps

"Once Before I Go"

I'll leave

the "Murder, Murder!"

Quarter

"For Good."

Unwanted.

Unholy.

The beloved demon, held soft and with love by a sinful snake.

While the angel who risked poison all that time ago, can only suffocate the windpipe.

So the lewd and the grim can't escape the little son's circuitous, bent corridors of mind.

Unwanted.

Unholy.

Amoral in all its nuance.

Unwanted.

Not a lie. A precursive prediction. The Mother had been sixteen and forced.

Not a lie.

Butterfly wings flapped across space.

The delicate patter of wings, the crazed patter of their footfall.

Two twins amorally traded.

Divvied through a selfish bet.

Small, delicate white wings corrupted by this selfish desire.

The ones of a Father, rectifying his sins.

The one sin he repents for.

Unwanted.

Unholy.

Is the interference of two teens.

Not his twins.

Surely not!

As the world rejected Remus and therefore, forsook his other half. His Roman empire.

And so the reigning Monarch raged.

The Monarch calculated.

Serrated and precise.

A stare cold as ice.

Unless, shhhh.

You'd unwisely...

Mention that tiny unhinged lavender spark always spiraling through the iris.

Of course then, the Butterfly would have to parse your heart open.

Allow it to bleed.

As long as their hearts didn't bleed.

Of that Dearest Family then the Mom-arch would cut open as many hearts as necessary.

Watch them spill and stain his own hands.

And he would wipe away the tears that came after.

Why, with only the gentlest touch.

"Your sexuality is not your fault Thomas. Not at all."

As expected, just like the angel he had once loved.

Poor boy, by no volition of his own, was shunned.

"It's not your fault."

"It's not your fault."

*I don't care if you bleed*

"Morality is grey, dark is not evil."

What is evil, is preying upon the worst of society.

Luring away the young.

The maligned Pied Piper

Who for him or against him, turned away from the adults.

Covet them and prize them as their future.

Now his future.

So, my love?

Is this world worth pretending for?

Worth disassembling our twins piece by piece.

Are you really so much better.

Unwanted.

Unholy.

Such a choice!

Forgive me.

I'll reject it.

Can you betray our children?

When one becomes two.

Eyes meet cold and steel toward tired and brittle.

A lawyer and a terrorist.

Quite the odd pair.

Quite the destructive.

Oh my love, you opened this door.

To a set-up and farce.

As you opened the door each barbed word a barbed key.

Leading Remus to strife and loathing, leading us toward implosion.

A messy, bloody swan song all our own.

Or better yet, and I quite like this version...

Turned upon.

When you betray our son Remus.

When you hand me one piece towards your own eternal misery.

"Else your husband," such a potent poison. The sweetest leverage.

"Will suffer the consequences."

Tonight.

In just one night.

Patton White, no angel at all.

A man.

Tempted to sin.

Fell upon a sword.

And so Chrysalis had both the Ladybug and the Black Cat.

Remake this world anew.

Unwanted.

Unholy.

Amoral in each nuance.

This family restitched and reunited.