Bleeding Petals

Ten thousand petals.

Red, red, red like the blood dripping

Down his hand into grass gone black under the hour.

Midnight.

Without a moon or stars.

Just the soft plop of rain and the moan

Of a strengthening storm.

.

Run. Leave me.

.

The blood on his hands belonged in his veins,

The smudge of red on his lips belonged to another,

To the shadow, his lover.

The soft utterance of his farewell

That belonged nowhere clung to the air

Like the petrichor, unrelenting.

.

I'm sorry. I won't leave you.

.

It was a bad goodbye,

Broken by the impossibility of him weeping,

Shattered like glass inside of the man's chest

At seeing black eyes turn soft with sorrow.

It was a farewell

That should have never been.

A goodbye that only slept in myth.

.

Together then.

.

It happened.

The world erupted in red light,

Cosmic fingers hooking around his belt and yanking

Him far away from the clearing and its pretty little

Red gerbera daisies gathered around the forest's edge,

Watching as his world exploded into grief

And celestial impossibilities.

.

Dream of me.

.

He didn't want to dream.

They would all turn into nightmares anyway.

Thunder growled across the sky.

Little raindrops, warm and fat, fell from above.

Bright light raced across the nothingness,

Illuminating a mirrored cottage

To the one he once knew so intimately.

.

I'll find you.

.

Would he, the man wondered,

Tearing mossy eyes away from the lightless sky above.

The wand in his hand was gone.

Replacing it, a large red flower.

A gerbera daisy with its thousand bloody leaves.

He mouthed a spell, watched as nothing happened.

Cold wind slapped across his face.

.

There is no magic here.

_____________________________

After a bit of thinking (and a comment from D.K. Shepard) I've thrown this into the fantasy poem series below that I really need to get to naming. Check out the rest if you haven't!

The Tether

The Strings of Night

Obsidian Water

The Cottage Window

Nighttime Pastime