The LitFic Review

Agnew by AdrianJCLe

I feel still, the silken touch upon my skin;

its kiss, still moist upon me, strips my thought.

Its slash, it pares me from my will

And in my pain, I dimly know that I am caught.

Those unseen, they did assail my skin

and for each countless cut I did endure

I felt such desperate need but to absolve.

Why feel a love for one impure?

All goes dark, but I retain my consciousness

and lost amidst the swirl of night

the silence is yet tempered with bursts of even-rounded mewling sounds

that bring strange comfort in that darkened light.

There is good warmth... and that is welcome too

but comes with it the ’turn to feeling,

which is not so welcomed to my aching heart.

For within it comes the pain of being.

The Coin of Styx is paid but seven hundred times.

“Life’s like that,” they once said, but only now do I believe

that seven hundred is a magic number,

that brings to one the power to perceive.

For through this darkness shines the dour anti-light of each past turn.

And I see, though dimness offers some relief,

the darkened shades of once-ago; the shifting veils of long-gone times;

the ones that hint at tempting lies and false belief.

Caught now, so far from where I do belong,

not home, nor either in that other place,

I feel the pain about me change; ‘tis cold again and bright and white

and has no close surround to cradle me as did that fleeting resting space.

And I do finally and un-reluctantly succumb to my most desperate urge;

my impulse, my want, my most despairing need

that bears an un-consoling thrust

to live, to gasp, to fill my lungs... and of course, to feed.

And the light, it burns my fledgling eyes

though tight I squeeze them fast against the sear.

I will not match my squally sound of pain

with eyes to see them smile at what they hear.

Yet I may not so much as turn my ears;

am forced to hear their cruel, outspoken words of joy

as they wrench my flesh from its brief comfort place

and look and smile and say with glee: ‘It’s done. It is a boy!’