Battered Eyes

This is for you,
battered eyes losing spring,
and a twitch
that became all of you.

In despair,
without light, I
shout and shout again,

until the shout injures
the night.
Your flesh chewed and mauled,

and I with bloodied mouth
your heart bitten,
twisting in my buffeting air.

This our end,
my fingers and thoughts decipher
the loss, a cavity of sorrow.

The distance grows
and then
another cycle.

Implements of pain,
clamps and whips
and rope.
I am an expert in pain,
my hands draw your tears,
burning in the silent
despairing night,
lost to the body that you loved.

My voice razors and needles,
peels the shell of the egg
you treasure deep
inside.

Now no leap can
embrace through the
thicket of thorns.

Quills barbed and
embedded
you trembling,
weeping alone,
empty of what little
you had left.

And I, for the first of
many times,
grasp the end,
the agonies. Agonizing
torture that I
give
as gifts.

Your flesh weeps and twitches,
I lash and lash till my arm aches.
Then nothing. Time peels away
and peels away, but nothing is revealed.

No blossom. No bloom.
Only the crying, only the smothering
darkness of us silent beside the other.

No reaching of hands.
No sharing of warmth.
Just the silence
and the darkness.