Council Property

Then, In the early hours, by the dim glow of a fluorescent strip light she passed between worlds. The bereaved march in like sheep one by one, that subtle relentless buzzing, breathing in and breathing out, still, after all of this. 

 My body aches, my lungs burn - cauterised with volcanic ash, in hell grateful that the creatures have been gracious enough to keep a seat warm for me. I wait by my window like a faithful dog beside a grave, the same song on rotation but I have forgotten what it means. 

If I collapse, the world goes down with me. Beneath my red raw skin, images of pulsating flesh, dreams doused with gold and ecstasy and in my forever restless sleep I bathed in the cold twilight of the winter. Inevitable as change still using that tired, cliche alias called progress. 

They butchered all of the trees around here, the lone survivor stood forthright and alone, like a promised savior out in the snow. With strong bare branches reaching out to connect the world anew. 

They stared at me with wide savage eyes as my heart was blown from my chest by the shockwave. Like a bombs gone off, disembodied mind atrophed, along with limbs and ligaments, the carnage wrapped in cartilage and faint murmurs of “I love you”, distant, from a hospital bed. 

I walk independently. And still I bleed in the mirror as council property. Branded by a cat with nine tails, crucified beneath a crumbling church ceiling, while a rain of stained glass falls from above forever- you stole my youth but you will never take my crown. 

With my heart, my tears, my blood and that of those I love ingrained into council carpet I will burn you to the ground- with my love the only thing still separate from the contradictions and hypocrisy of your beloved bureaucracy. From my blood I will paint new futures, empires built on foundations of stars. I will be what I was from the start -

Everything and anything that you are not.