Curved against the wall,
Cold seeping stone
Lies an unconscious figure
Spread-eagled all alone
The window high above
Striped with grey-black bars
Throws the squares of silver down
As though disgusted by the stars
“Archangel, Secret Rebel”
says the markings on the walls
“Virgins white turned sinners black”
The waking figure calls
It reaches for the pen
The paper and the words
Scrawling them all down
Then folding them into birds
They hang suspended from the night
Forever yet nevermore
As though Time would never dance
And there was no peace or war
It reaches for the flame
And burns the folded wings
Tears them, rips them into shreds
As they fall in tissue-thin flings
Quotes the figures cracked lips:
“Sanity was our martyr rebel,
What I was, what I left
When I fell like a discarded pebble”
