by Amanda McLeod

 

Yours is a strength I could never hope to summon
A resolute silence, no words without meaning ever pass your lips

Your stone skin is cold beneath my hand; your belfrey inhabited
by bronze shapes determined to tear sound from your shadowed throat

I ache in ways and places you will never understand
As I am forced along the path in search of safety, or a cliff to fall from

This fortune teller cannot take a leap of faith
When I am faithless, my beliefs a shattered portentous mirror

The endless need for answers has too high a cost
And I feel it in my abdomen, in every neat incision

Where the skin peels back, scarlet petals blooming as the blade
exposes glossy organs, secrets taut beneath their membranes

While I slice the veil of time in search of a foothold
A place to stand where waters flow in both directions

Fear is all the things I cannot see; the darkened room,
Although familiar, hides the monstrous in its shadowed corners

Where they heave beneath grey mucoused hides, their shapes
Undefined, reaching forth to suffocate, transmute, absorb

Tall and unyielding under midnight sky, you are anathema
To nightmares; they find no solace in the planes of you

What I cannot know, cannot control, pulls at me, an undercurrent
For which I have no stomach. Guesses flow from my lips

Like dirges, funereal attempts to rest the past and solidify what lies ahead
By casting light into the void, to be swallowed

Only time is constant, and only through its passing might I find the truth
It swirls around me, slipping through my skeletal fingers

But you feel the rhythm of time in your foundations
You claim nothing, but that days will pass and you will mark them

Guilt lies weightless on your shoulders, even as it
Presses down upon me like the scream of a thousand suns

And you predict the future better than I ever could
Sounding out each hour moments before it falls

 

 

 

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Amanda McLeod is an author and artist based in Canberra, Australia. She writes and makes art in response to the things she loves, the things that drift through her daydreams and what keeps her awake at night. She loves good coffee and being outside, and hates noise. This year she plans to read her height in books. You’ll find her on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram @AmandaMWrites or at her website AmandaMcLeodWrites.com