Keep your back to me, spine against mine.
I want to feel the weight to tell me you're fine.
We are enduring struggle but not yet home,
roaming the battlefield strewn with bone.
Your boots are muddy, and mine bloody.
You comb through the enemy; I slay, slay, slay.
Keep away; I have killed again.
Picking through soldiers, fathers, and sons,
I think of their brothers, sisters, mums.
Sword stills.
Orphans are screaming.
I feel your weight come and I just keep on killing.
We have a goal.
We have a goal.
So I steal and steal from soul upon soul.
If I weighed my gold against yours, dear foe,
who is so bloody, bold and resolute,
I could take no more from you or your kin.
But there's a back to me worth the earth, for this
I thieve, naïve,
and cold silver will cut through gold again.
Keep your back to me, spine against mine
For I am weak and feeble,
drunk and unable to still the tremors in my hand.
Nine, ten down, red vines crawl up my arms,
the signs of death wind up to my neck.
Fine droplets splatter, the black murder scatters.
Come land between me and what I have done.
You're there. I have to remind myself.
I compare your clarity with the chaos encircling,
your glare piercing a path for us and a wealth of
gold loses its shine in the grass.
Hold me.
I'm shaking under the weight on my shoulders.
You sate my conscious,
sedate my mind into numbness,
erase my gutless self and sins …
Hold me close.
I'm scared of what I was.
It's over now - the fight that is -
but the peace I thought I'd find is amiss.
You kiss my lips but it feels so stale.
My heels fail to move after you,
the corpses behind are holding me back.
I hear them wail at me – my daughter,
my wife,
You have slaughtered a father,
a partner,
and for what cause?
All for those decrepit morals of yours.
AN - I got so nervous uploading this but it seemed to get a good reception on AO3 so here it is! Part of my new series of shorts, their story in verse! Yeeey~