The old assembled cage collapsed and for an instant he stood alone. Then he saw Love enter. And the sounds swirl in his head. A storm sweeping across the desert. Ripping and tearing at all the soft easy in between. Now he lays low. Below the tower in lumps. Folding skin rolling into slick strips as joints collapse and his skull splashes against spine. Blood follows from the wounds flowing down his arms and legs. His heart slows and his lungs whisper with silence. His mouth opens and his lips unfold around spots as a wind moves over his tongue. Cracked under his chin he bites down against the sting. A weave of wet rattle rises in his throat. He wants to scream as he thinks of the last words. These words from his Love.
"You have been a good servant." Tears drop from dark jelly eyes across sad fat cheeks. His face pressed to soiled stone. Like dead dust come to lay on empty shelves. He smells the dirt. With some small breaths he can taste it too.
"You have been a good servant. But you aren't needed anymore." Eyes focused on his fingers and the dry skin and the prints nearly rubbed off from the work for his Love. The work. It never seemed to end. Always there. Always needed. The love done for his Love.
"But you aren't needed anymore. Leave now and don't come back" Knuckles of white bone bent backwards. Breaking his fall broke his fingers. And more than fingers. Crushed parts of jaw line the back of his throat. Swallowing the chips as he sucks chill air. Protruding from stomach, ribs scrape the stair. But his ears hear only the words.
"Leave now and don't come back. We don't want you here." They form a ring. A strip of pain to circle and never end. A track to speed across without falling off. A path of far away from home set against a sky of you can never go back. There was a home. There was a here. There was a love. There was a time.
"We don't want you here. We have someone new." There was no thanks. There was no bargain. He was clean from the cage and suddenly slapped. He felt dressed in cold stabs as knives sliced up and down the length of his form. He opened himself to scream but a blade cut through gums and tongue and up through thick layers of deep flavor. Tender true Love stood away at the column as the New one split through his skin with skill. Cutting sheets of pulp away from stomach, chest and brow like a carver through spongy wood.
"We have someone new. Who is better than you ever were." Before the real fall he falls inside. The dreams of hopes of thoughts of home of Love. The picture of skin of eye of smile of Love. All make weight to pull and anchor his heart to the ground. The color and sound of his blood spraying was just a canvas for the true painting of pain now crashing through the glass.
"Who is better than you ever were. Don't cry now." He see's the reflection of Love through the shades and Love steps back so he can see one last time his dream of hope of thought of home. Love laughs and touches the New. And New touches Love.
"Don't cry now. You only show us how weak you are." And he slips over his heels. Beginning the real fall. The sound of Us is the last stab dead center to the heart as his body flips and turns in the night. His tears sliding from him. Slithering shadows spilling out like rain. Freezing into ice to bounce along the black streets into full gutters.
"You only show us how weak you are. I see how thin and useless you have become." Love made him. Without Love he was poor and pointless. See how easy he broke. A brittle boy with ragged hair clinging to a sunrise of auburn eyes. Love's eyes to never see again. He shivered like a pelt with plague wrapped in fleas trying to make itself skin. Wanting to be one with Love.
"I see how thin and useless you have become. You were a gem at one time." And then he hits and shatters on the broken steps of stone. A thin life pouring into wide cracks. A pool of waste gathers around him. The smell of his own empty. Leaving his body, river by stream. Veins through fields of weeds. Spiriting through dead flower beds. A coat of ugly wet seep added to the spoil of stepped over soul.
"You were a gem at one time. But your preciousness has washed away with the dirt." He would have given the stars. Separated the sap of space to find the shine off the brightest pearl. He would have made the horizon sleep with the song of Love. He would have pulled the sea into shape and made high walls of the water. Laying the land in liquid lines and creating castles of coral just for Love.
"But your preciousness has washed away with the dirt. You are only now forever a stain." And now he is truly going. The row of bones beneath his chest crumble and cave into hollow. The black echo of warm surrounds and spreads. The morning is coming and people have begun to gather. But not a person looks up and not a person looks down. They step over him to climb the tower. All in line and many more to come. Finding a tight grip on the grimy stair. The drum of last life is marched out over sweet organs as the cries for Love reach the highest hills.
02.08.05
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