SCORTCHED EARTH

 SCORTCHED EARTH

From the cavern’s edge,

I carve your shape from torchlight’s glare,

A gulf yawns wide, jagged with shale,

Splitting your orbit from my air.  

Ten thousand barbs,

Glistening like frost-bitten steel,

Slice the ether from your flesh to mine,

Their sting sears through my bones—I reel.  

Eyes rivet to the ash-strewn floor,

Too scorched to rise, too raw to meet,

Lest the ember in my chest ignite,

And spill my buried heartbeat.  

In a realm unshackled,

My throat would roar, a canyon’s cry,

Unleashing what now festers mute,

A hymn carved into midnight’s sky.  

I’d claw through abyss to bind you close,

Let my blood pool crimson, vein by vein,

I’d revel in the ruin, the cost,

I’d shatter and reform a thousand reigns.  

Banish me to storms of jagged ice,

Hiss “nevermore” through gritted teeth,

I’d revel in the ruin, the cost,

I’d claw back through a thousand griefs.**

Oh, oh, a gale’s lament.  

Graze my lips with yours,

A fleeting spark on a gale-swept cliff,

I’ll echo the touch, hollow as frost,

A mask for the inferno I stiff.  

Love’s a crucible,

These secrets, molten chains I forge,

They scald my core, a relentless flood,

Yet the weight won’t scourge.  

Beneath a vault of fractured stars,

I once traced your shadow on the stone,

Your laughter danced with the river’s scars,

Now I hoard that echo alone.  

In some untamed sphere,

I’d need no balm for this rending soul,

No whispered pleas to loose your thread,

As I watch your tide unroll.  

She stalks your dreams with a siren’s gleam,

Her city sprawls, a lattice of rust and flame,

Towers claw the sky, devour your gleam,

While I linger, unclaimed, the same.  

I’d claw through abyss to bind you close,

Let my blood pool crimson, vein by vein,

I’d revel in the ruin, the cost,

I’d shatter and reform a thousand reigns.  

Banish me to storms of jagged ice,

Hiss “nevermore” through gritted teeth,

I’d revel in the ruin, the cost,

I’d claw back through a thousand griefs.**  

Time gnaws my marrow, relentless and slow,

I choke the words, entomb them deep,

Lips sealed tight as a crypt’s cold maw,

No fracture dares to weep.  

I dread the confession’s jagged edge,

The plunge that could sunder what I hold,

Better this silence, this fragile ledge,

Than ash where warmth once glowed.  

Yet the dam cracks with every breath,

A tremor rips through sinew and vein,

Could I howl into the void’s black depth,

And still find you through the strain?  

Her neon claws tighten their grip,

A labyrinth of smoke and mirrored lies,

But I’m the ember that won’t slip,

A flame beneath your wandering eyes.  

I’d claw through abyss to bind you close,

Let my blood pool crimson, vein by vein,

I’d revel in the ruin, the cost,