As autumn dies,
the bitter night wind
seeps into the stone walls
of what has become my
new home.
Hope of leaving
abandoned me.
She peers into the defeat
replete within my gaze,
and smiles
with
pleased and mocking scorn.
Dressed in midnight,
she comes,
a cream-skinned shadow
in silvered fog,
and tells me her name
is
Cara,
as if I cared,
as if defeat had somehow
changed to affection.
A Murder follows her,
and obeys her every gesture.
Her lacquered black nails point,
and soft eyes are
plucked like jewels from bone settings,
the screams
drowned by the eldritch music
of their raucous cries.
Why do you stay? she whispers in my mind.
Do you not see there are no stones to bar your path?
No chains, no locks, no guards to block your way?
Blind,
I stumble past
the warring scents
of lavender and carrion,
to roam
the shrouded night.
Exhausted,
helpless,
and alone,
by dawn
I find myself
returning
once again,
to where she freed me.
And barefoot, shivering,
crying ice-laced tears,
I walk the frigid riverbed
back to my
Cara-cell.
Beyond Panic 