to skip stones on the ocean: NaPo 2016

my chest is a sunken ship
the wooden beams of my ribs
slowly decaying and caving in
on a seashell heart that is
trapped at the bottom of the ocean

You had the touch of Thanatos
collecting girls’ souls and
arranging them in a vase,
leaving them to wilt
like asphodels, and
I am a fading blossom
a red thread tying
my fate to others
as we dry out in this drought

I once knew a boy
smart and charismatic
voted most likely to succeed
because he climbs pedestals
like they’re mountains
and I realized why thoughts
Of him sprinted through my mind,
but I realized, we are the same,
color negative and color positive
juxtaposed on the same
roll of film

The first day we met you enchanted
With your raven wings but you
Were no Eros,no matter how
Beautifully you wore your wings,
And I could never be your Psyche.

You were Thanatos, and your touch
Brings a drought to nature’s palate
That not even Demeter can paint over

And now the garden we cultivated in our
Heart has succumbed to the drought
Leaving only a barren basin of
Parched earth there
Where only the skeleton of memories
Remain, bones to be picked clean
By our demons circling our empty skies

I should have walked away
But my own folly has enraptured me
and I am suspended in a limbo as you
circle the canopy of my mind,
taunting me the way the vulture
leered at Prometheus every day,
and I mark the days the dawn
that bleeds across the sky,
painting the gray heavens
in temporary watercolor hues
only to be washed away by
the shadow of your wings
as you descend, dragging
the gray cloak over
my skies and

I feel my
crumpled heart falling
with the gray curtain
only for it to learn to
regenerate its wings
in synch with the rising
and falling of the curtain
you pull over my world

Congratulations on completing NaPo!

@WritingWolf Thank you! Narrow victory but still a victory!