Like tide to Lady Luna’s aria,
Like ash to skybound breath,
Beneath a gaze that unspools the cosmos,
I surrender.
I am dragged beneath the swell of the world,
Strangled in its quicksilver current.
Silence here blooms heavy as iron,
Heavy as steel as it settles beneath my flesh.
Inferno waits with a sovereign hunger,
Ravenous and unrepentant,
Scoring ember-lit runes into the parchment of my skin.
Lips of covenant’s flame,
A hymn of ash.
You arrive robed in petrichor,
A patron of soil, seed and bone.
Your touch is the furrow,
Your gaze the sickle;
I am the field undone.
Zephyr escapes your parted lips like a thief in the night,
slipping through my soul like smoke between a child’s palms;
A theft both tender and merciless.
I breathe you in and collapse into sky,
Into midnight gales and starlight.
If ruin is the cost of your nearness,
Then kindling I will be.
Let me be pyre’s ash,
Let me be wave dashed hollow.
Before the helm of calamity’s scourge,
Before the claiming dusk,
I will not plead for deliverance.
I will not beg my father’s God.
I will only pray that if I must meet my maker,
It is the soft sound of your whisper that guides me home.
Amelia Kennedy is a student at Kennesaw State University, studying journalism. She freelances within Atlanta’s arts scene, covering musicians, galleries, and community voices. When she isn’t reporting, she can usually be found on her porch with a journal and a well-loved thesaurus. Her thoughts, contact information, and other works can be found at her blog, Melismatic Media.